By MC2 Nathan Serpico

Rear Adm. Kathleen M. Creighton, Deputy Commander, Joint Force Headquarters-DOD Information Networks, visited the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) campus, June 7, to meet with junior officers in the information warfare community. During her visit, Creighton took the opportunity to sit in on final project presentations for Dr. Alex Bordetsky’s tactical and wireless networking class.

“The presentations and research these students have done is amazing,” said Creighton. “In my opinion, the curricula now are much more military focused in terms of their applicability. I met with [Information Sciences chair] Dr. Dan Boger, and he ran me through the three major curricula that [Information Professionals] are mostly in, and I could just really see that they are very applicable to cyberspace operations today.

“I was so impressed with the students and how relevant what they were presenting is to military operations, whether it was a [humanitarian assistance and disaster relief] scenario or an unmanned vehicle scenario. I can very easily see its applicability to today’s operations,” she added.

Students were equally eager to present their research with one of the senior leaders of their community, and to get invaluable feedback on their efforts.

“It was great to have her sit in with us during our presentations,” said Lt. Cmdr. Santhosh Shivashankar, an IW student in the Network Operations and Technology curriculum. “We’re looking at using the remote, advise and assist system – which is generally used downrange with our special operations forces and ground troops – to help with host nation partnerships, guiding those troops to whatever mission target they are going to. We are trying to repurpose that to a humanitarian assistance and disaster relief scenario,” he explained.

"While offering students a senior leader’s perspective on their coursework, Creighton said she came away from the interaction with confidence for the future leaders of the Information Warfare Community (IWC).

“The students here are great future leaders of the IWC, and there are some amazing opportunities they are going to have in the Navy and in the joint force,” she noted.

Creighton graduated from NPS in 1997 with a Master of Science in Information Technology Management.

“It has been about eight years since I was last at NPS, and it feels awesome to be back,” she said. “I’ve noticed that so many things are the same, but I can see a lot of improvements too ... It’s just a really special place to me.”