First-Class First Classmen

Asked to name a Great Idea, Annapolis' middies are wont to say "Beat Army." But the academy has lately undergone a bit of brainlifting. Courses have been tripled to catch up with missile-age gear and theory; the 4,100 midshipmen can major in twelve fields; the new academic dean and almost half the faculty are civilians. Middies no longer even march to class in formation.

This fall came another innovation: the idea--patterned frankly and gratefully on Yale's "Scholars of the House"--that a few bright first classmen (seniors) should be freed to study largely on their own. Called "Trident Scholars," they are picked from the scholastic top 10%, get sprung from routine classes (military duties continue) while pursuing independent research projects. As the academy's unbarnacled superintendent, Rear Admiral Charles C. Kirkpatrick, puts it, the aim is to "give a bright boy his head and see how far he'll go."

The first six Trident Scholars are steaming in deep waters. Midshipman Clark Graham, who is also captain of the squash team, is studying ways to reduce underwater boundary-layer drag on submarines, for example. Others are pondering modern Argentine history, the future use of lasers in naval gunnery, the effect of radiation on transistors, the accuracy of navigational methods, and a potential heteropoly acid combining gallium and tungsten. The young scholars range far off base, from the Bell Telephone labs to a nuclear sub cruise.

The big hope is that Tridents will help Annapolis attract brighter high school seniors. "The Trident program," says one middie, "gives us something to boast about, a form of intellectual freedom and encouragement for scholarly inquiry that most fellows we know at other colleges don't necessarily have."

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