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   From the bridge of the 225-foot-long State of Michigan, the waterline of Grand Haven’s harbor front ripples an almost disconcertingly far distance below. A cadet in a sharply creased brown uniform is pouring over charts on a metal table near the ship’s global positioning system, while another is explaining to visitors the controls of the former Navy vessel converted from its original function of tracking Soviet submarines.
   The ship’s new life is that of a floating classroom. The State of Michigan helps train the next generation of Great Lakes and ocean-bound seamen for work with private shipping companies, the Coast Guard, marine facilities and much more. Ferris State, working together with the Great Lakes Maritime Academy at Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City, offers cadets the opportunity to complete a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration while also working toward their maritime license.
   Students come to the program from a wide range of backgrounds, but are united in their attraction to a life on the water as a career choice. They’re also united in their dedication in working toward license and degree – after all, it’s tough to skip class once the gangplank comes up.

Before the Mast
   Many of the cadets, but not all, already have a familiarity with boats and sailing before beginning their studies at the academy. For Detroit-area native Joe Tabone, much of that experience came during his teenage years when he was in a junior Navy program, the Sea Cadets, which took him all over the Great Lakes.

Joe Tabone

   “I was able to talk to captains and engineers on the ships, and they guided me toward the Maritime Academy,” says Tabone. “Now I want to get my M.B.A. I need a little break right now and get a little experience, but that’s the direction I want to go in.”
   Tabone graduated from Ferris this past spring with his bachelor’s in Business Administration. Although the new cooperative agreement allows students to complete their coursework at the NMC campus, Tabone studied for two years on the Big Rapids campus – only partially because he began his study before the new agreement.
   “I took all my Business courses on the Big Rapids campus; I wanted to experience university life,” explains Tabone, who is currently third assistant engineer on the State of Michigan. “In my Management classes I was able to apply my knowledge and experiences.” Those experiences include spending New Year’s Eve 2000 onboard the Gemini while stuck in the ice on Lake Erie. “It was a lot of fun – a little cold,” says Tabone.
   That unique way of ushering in the new millennium did nothing to deter Tabone from heading back out on the lakes. He expects to work for the next couple of years on his license aboard commercial ships, before his planned return to the classroom.

Freshwater and Salt
   The GLMA was established in 1969 by an act of congress, sponsored by Michigan senators Bob Griffin and Phil Hart, and by then-congressman Gerald Ford. That act made the academy the country’s only freshwater academy – a unique and important aspect of the GLMA, which remains true to this day.
   “Most of the navigation on the Great Lakes is called ‘piloting’,” says State of Michigan Captain and GLMA faculty member Mike Surgalski, standing on the harbor front across from the Coast Guard facility in Grand Haven. “For example, you don’t make a port like this very often when you’re sailing on the ocean, whereas in the Great Lakes you’re making a port every day. So there’s a big difference in navigational technique. Our cadets can test for the ocean license too, and most of them do. This is the only school like that. At the other academies you can get a Great Lakes license, but you have to design your own program. Here, Great Lakes sailing is our primary focus.”
   In 1980 the GLMA looked to expand its offerings to cadets from earning a license and an associates degree, to the ability to also earn a bachelors degree.
   “We decided to have a ‘three for two’ kind of program,” says GLMA Superintendent John Tanner, “three years at Great Lakes and two years for the bachelor’s degree at Ferris. That was established in 1982. Today we have an integrated, seamless program between Ferris State, Northwestern Michigan College and the academy for a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and the appropriate engineering or deck subject matter for a cadet’s certificate. It’s a powerful credential.”
   In 1999 the GLMA made the transition so that all incoming academy students were also enrolled at Ferris. In addition to the acquisition of the State of Michigan, the academy has a new on-land facility in Traverse City overlooking Grand Traverse Bay and has added more than $600,000 in new equipment to their ship-handling and radar labs. Then there are the upgrades being planned for the State of Michigan.
   In 2002 when the Maritime Administration took possession of the ship (then named the Persistent) for the GLMA, it was mothballed at a Coast Guard base in Baltimore after having been used for about five years in drug interdiction efforts off the coast of Florida.
   “We toured it and said, yes, that’s the one we want,” says Tanner. “Last year we had help from Sen. Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow, and Rep. Dave Camp and Bart Stupak to get money for renovation of the ship to tailor it specifically to our needs with more berthing, a classroom and enlargement of this dining room we’re in right now. The ship is a fantastic training device. I don’t know how we’ve gotten along without it before. The students have taken great pride in it. Most of the officers on the ship right now are alumni who are volunteering their time.”

Celestial Navigation
   You might imagine academy graduates working on Great Lakes freighters or for some large shipping company. And that’s true, but cadets have gone on to do much more. One recent graduate was at the helm of a 950-foot-long Bob Hope class ship delivering supplies to Iraq. The academy is regularly visited by representatives of federal agencies doing background checks on prospective employees who are graduates and also have been checked for top security clearance by these agencies.
   When they’re out on the State of Michigan, current cadets put in their study time on the bridge, down in the ship’s engine control room, or in their own cabins, which seem almost like any college dorm room with their apartment-size refrigerators and TV-VCR combination units (“Blockbuster Video says they no longer have a late fee – we’re testing that,” says one cadet).
   Both Tanner and Tabone compare running a ship to managing a business, so the maritime license/business degree connection is a natural one. And considering the range of options students have upon graduation, it’s not surprising that Tabone should hark back to a sailor’s classic mode of navigation when describing how he sees his options.
   “It’s not the sky that’s the limit,” he says, “it’s the stars.”