Costolo said they found a struggling alignment between AFRICOM’s overarching theater strategic objectives and the approaches taken by individual agencies. Finding few assessments by those agencies themselves, the cadets sought to develop such a framework. They also learned about the region’s wide range of maritime concerns.

“West Africa recently has become a bigger target for piracy threats, for example, but their biggest problem is illegal fishing within their territorial waters. There also are a lot of deep sea oil reserves being developed off the coast, raising concerns about the big platforms being built and how to protect those from terrorists or pirates,” he noted.

Costolo initially was concerned the project, as described, would be almost entirely related to his government major teammates, but soon found mathematics was an invaluable asset.

“We had to compile raw data, take qualitative descriptions – such as the training was good or the trainees were receptive – in a way it could actually show alignment. We narrowed it down to five countries of interest and certain strategic objectives of AFRICOM that related to the maritime domain,” he said.

“Our best understanding of the kind of bureaucracy involved here has AFRICOM being in charge of all efforts in Africa, as a component of DoD. That put them out on a limb, needing to know everything going on in Africa by all the different U.S. agencies, including some who had been there a lot longer. So the question was to take AFRICOM’s objectives and map the various agency efforts onto that to assess how they related to what AFRICOM wanted.”

The cadets also considered how the CRS projects may affect their future Coast Guard careers.

“I would say I have learned more from this project in terms of becoming a Coast Guard officer and how to become a real officer in this year than the previous three combined. The complexity of interactions within the Coast Guard and through all levels of government, U.S. and international, has been incredible,” Costolo said.

“It has broadened my professional outlook and how to prepare myself to ask the right questions, to see and understand the cultural differences in Africa, and how to phrase things diplomatically to be sensitive to other people. Projects like this really throw you into the fire in terms of having and developing a professional presence.”

He also had some recommendations for the future of Academy cadet research.

“I would have more advanced research projects, requiring in-depth field research, yearlong heavy academic research, and then application. That is a unique combination and it’s a shame there are only one or two of those each year,” he said. “It also is a bridge between academic learning and real-world challenges.”

Schumacher had similar perspectives.