Fleet Academe

The Academe sigil is the flame of learning on the Fleet Eagle.

“The Academe is like no other school you’ll encounter in the Alliance. It is a combination of a university, a research facility, a science academy, and a military institution. And while we’re most interested in mental fitness, we cannot deny that there might be a need, one day, for a more tangible kind of health. You’ll be stretched here, perhaps to your limits. Some of you may even choose to leave—”

Training of Fleet officers takes place at the Academe. Since all Fleet personnel are officers, this includes specialists (what would be enlisted in other navies) as well as command track students.

History

The Academe was founded on Selnor in 26 BA by Elnor Ralafin, the Asanii captain who identified a need for standardization of Fleet education in the (then) 23-year-old Fleet. Ralafin served as the first Commandant for 8 months after overseeing the building of the first phase campus in Terracentrus. In 27 BA, the second commandant, Hadwin Haley, stepped in to guide the Academe into a more finished state, and it was under his tenure that the Terracentrus campus was built to its present size and saw its curriculum solidified. This process consumed almost 17 years. Haley was nearing the end of his tenure at this point, but he began making the case for satellite campuses in his last years as commandant. He retired from the post in 47 BA, after two decades of service, and handed the baton to his successor, Priscilla "Prissy" Starswide.

Initially, graduation from the Academe was not mandatory for Fleet members, in part because the facilities weren't large enough to process the number of students. But the problems observed by Ralafin only intensified the larger Fleet grew, and it became a matter of increasing urgency to ensure a basic foundation of shared, institutional knowledge among Fleet members; this is what led to the new campus initiative in 48 BA. Starswide, who'd been working as Haley's second for nearly five years, embarked on the spreading of the Academe to other systems, starting with the first satellite campus on Tam-ley.

The first graduating class of the Terracentrus campus (and thus, the Academe as an institution) was in 30 BA. At the time of Alysha's graduation (455 BA), there had been 425 graduating classes.

Administration

The Academe and all its satellites are overseen by a single commandant, who resides at the Terracentrus campus. All satellite campuses are overseen by an adjutant as their senior/commanding officer. Faculty and staff are separated into schools by track, and specialties within that track are referred to as sections. (Thus, the School of Science might have an Astronomy section, with its own faculty pool and administrative lead.)

Tuition

Prior to Brighthaven's intervention, tuition at the Academe on a typical colony was a fourth of the cost of what it was on Selnor. Actual cost is listed as sixty thousand fin: "within the scope of a professional working in their field, or maybe a particularly hard-working layman."

Changes post-Brighthaven

Prior to meeting Alysha, Brighthaven made this change:

• Opened graduation ceremony to civilians, and had it hosted at a public venue off-campus.

During his tenure (after meeting Alysha and prior to his departure), Brighthaven made the following changes:

• Tuition for students declaring as specialists stayed the same (really high). He wanted to reduce tuition across the board, but the Pelted were outraged because they want only people who really, really want to go into the military to do so, to ensure 'quality'. (As if having money is a guarantee of quality?). So he argued that tuition for specialists should remain high because their skills are globally applicable outside Fleet. It's a quality education they can apply anywhere.
• Tuition for students declaring for command track got slashed in half. That's the best he could do.
• He found ten new scholarship grants, and made sure they were from non-Core-Pelted sources so they would be more fairly awarded. Seven of those ten are specifically for command track.
• To fight the belief that the uneven scholarship would deprive Fleet of the necessary number of quality specialists, he had a program developed that would train up non-Fleet specialists to work in Fleet.
• He hired a grant/scholarship specialist for the Terracentrus campus to keep hunting for those things.
• He instated a management position for grant/scholarships for all the Academe campuses.
• He canvassed for, and had created, a committee to oversee the Academe curriculum across the board, with a chair to make decisions. (He assumed he'd end up in that position, but they moved him sideways into PR when Newell saw he was burning out.)

Locations

There are 21 satellite campuses of the Academe throughout the Alliance, on Core worlds and in the colonies, at the time of Alysha Forrest's graduation. The first campus, and still the home of the Commandant, is in Terracentrus, on Selnor.

Terracentrus Campus

The Terracentrus campus is the first Academe campus, and also, the smallest, by several orders of magnitude.

A collection of low-lying buildings occupied the northernmost edge of the estate; as she drew nearer she saw a regal house rising against the fringe of the southern side. As she approached, she saw two guards, dark Hinichi with stern expressions, tails rigid despite the wind. Behind them on three tall poles, the Academe flew the Alliance flag, the Fleet’s, and Fleet Academe’s.

The Terracentrus Campus

The Commandant lives on campus in an "elegant, colonial-style manor" uphill. It has an Earth-style door that swings open, and a doorchime that needs to be depressed to sound.

• Blue Smoke, a bar on or near the campus
• Ralafin Park, named after Elnor Ralafin, the first commandant; has a bulletin board where information like room assignments are posted
• Auditorium antechamber: "The Alliance’s flag hung there over a pedestal, its glory implied by its setting: the rounded heights of the wall were space-black, jeweled with pinpoints of stars, some labeled, others not, each pricked from the tapestry by subtle holographics."
• Administration building: "The inside of the building had been built of cold gray marble, but designed with lines so austere it defied awe. There were no plants to break the chill. Even the wooden furniture had been stained a gray-brown."
• The on-campus residence of the Academe commandant, at the southeast; an "elegant, colonial-style manor."
• An station in orbit over Selnor.

Faculty

• Matthew Brighthaven, formerly commandant
• Harroway Sloan, formerly Brighthaven's second
• Mark West, Applied Tactics
• Shaver, physical training

Local Customs and Traditions

• Commencement. Currently held at the Terracentrus public amphitheater and open to the general public. The commandant presides over the ceremony and gives the rank braids.

Satellite Campuses

The first Academe site was constrained by the size of the city and the location in it, but it was quickly understood that the numbers of students the Academe would have to handle in order to crew its exploding Fleet would necessitate much larger facilities elsewhere. The remaining twenty campuses are almost like small cities, with average student populations in the 40-50,000 range at any given time.

Known Satellites:

• Tam-ley: the oldest satellite campus
• Starbase Gamma: the largest non-planetary campus

Customs and Traditions

(Until I come up with a better name for this section.)

• Class Ring - Every graduate of the Academe is issued a ring with either a sapphire or onyx, with a metal overlay of a star; the shoulders on either side of the center stone will have each person's specialties (as on the rank tags). Name and graduation date are engraved on the inside. Each ring has a transceiver, originally intended as a way to locate the person if they need aid, but since almost no one wears their Academe rings, it's become something of a joke that they're never used for their intended purposes: most campuses call them some variation of 'Lost it' or 'in-a-drawer' or 'quick inspec (inspection)', as in 'you misplaced your ring and are using the transceiver to find it.'
• Each of the campuses teaches a specific way to pin the dress cloak, either the Elnor or Sheveii.
• Dress Drills - apparently there are some. As well as parade formations.

Curriculum

Call the Academe a college-level institution, intended originally for the production (mostly) of 'specialists', which are the subject matter experts that make up most of the crew: scientists, engineers, healers, diplomats and politicians, and a spattering of 'we shoot guns' (tactical and security) types. The majority of the curriculum is focused on broad educational outcomes, then, with specializations.

Basic courses everyone will take:

• Language Skills: Communication 1 and 2
• Math skills: Critical Thinking, Math 1 and 2
• Law and Ethics: Ethics, Law 1
• Philosophy and History: History (Fleet), History (Alliance); Philosophy 1
• Science and Engineering: Principles of Science; Behavior
• Physical Education: various training regimens (when Alysha Forrest was a student, taught by Shaver)
• Tech Familiarity: these courses involve exercises aboard starbases, ships, and in various weightless conditions, intended to familiarize the cadet with the environments they'll be navigating in Fleet. Most of these exercises are concentrated in the final two years of the Academe coursework.

Major fields of study vary depending on the specialist, or whether the cadet is going for the Tactical course, in which case they take classes in leadership and Applied Tactics; when Alysha Forrest was a student, taught by a retired Terran Marine, Mark West; included Capture the Flag exercises and hand-to-hand in the Arena*

Electives are widely varied based on the campus and availability of instructors, but typical offerings include:

• Foreign Languages
• Terran Military history (an elective that Matthew Brighthaven fought to have included in the normal curriculum)
• Higher math and sciences
• Psychology
• Cultural Issues

Because of the breadth of the curriculum, it is possible (and often necessary) for far-flung Alliance citizens to do one, two, or even three years at a local college-level institute and then transfer into one of the 22 locations of the Academe to finish their schooling. The tech familiarization was not initially concentrated in the last year of schooling, but once the Academe faced the issues involved with onboarding colonists and citizens far from a campus, administrators began clustering those exercises and courses in the final years to make it easier to accept students with some amount of classwork already under their belts. Specialists can do all the tech familiarization within a semester unless their specialization is specific to technology (like engineers). Tactical students, however, need the full two years in space, which limits transfer students who choose it as a track to two years of transfer credit.

Historical

Early Academe curriculum was rigid: other than electives, all students processed at the same rate through the same classes. This quickly evolved, for pragmatic reasons, into the present-day situation, where a suggested schedule is available to all students, but they are free to see an advisor to adjust it to their situation, or they're free to make their own schedules and see if it works. The Terracentrus campus is one of the few that is still somewhat rigorous about scheduling, probably because its smaller size allows a closer relationship between the faculty/staff and the students. This is seen as a bit of an anachronism by most Fleet members; no real cachet obtains to going to the historical campus, particularly since its size constrains the electives and specializations it can offer.

Graduation

The Academe (and all its satellites) graduates one class a year, regardless of whether students optimize their schedules to finish earlier. Because of this, however, students in good standing who have completed all their coursework but who are waiting on their year's graduation ceremony to matriculate, can be assigned and deployed. Their diplomas are logged electronically, and the paper copy is available if they request it.

Most students will graduate after a standard 4-year curriculum. Some specialties require more schooling to qualify for certain career paths; four years will see a medical track student into a job as a healer-assist, but they cannot qualify as a healer without the longer educational standard required by the Alliance. Extra schooling is available but optional for other tracks, such as science, but the extra schooling does not confer almost any benefit. Science specialists with the equivalent of a doctorate will start out as ensigns just like their 4-year peers in Fleet. However, specialists with additional education are considered preferentially for assignments that make use of their specialty, so a doctorate-level ensign in science is more likely to obtain a posting to a science survey vessel than a four-year ensign.

Continuing education post-graduation is encouraged in specialists, but only required in Tactical officers on a command path. Many specialists do opt to continue their education while deployed, however, and further education, while it might not accelerate their movement up the ranks, can result in increased pay and better posting opportunities.