U.S. Naval War College (NWC) provost Lewis M. Duncan has surveyed his new surroundings, and sees clear opportunities for the college to become a leader for a new generation of learners.

Changes are coming quickly to the field of education, according to Duncan, who says that students are demanding more freedom to control their own education.

While those changes may scare some educational institutions, NWC is well positioned to take advantage of them. Duncan used war gaming as an example.

"Simulation tends to be a very effective [way to learn]. And the Naval War College is leap years ahead of most educational institutions as far as such experiential gaming goes. That can be very powerful," said Duncan.

As student educational needs continue to change, Duncan expects that NWC will be responsive to those future needs as students rely more and more on technology to get information.

"It may not quite be our students yet," said Duncan, contrasting NWC students to traditional college-aged learners. "But I do believe that it [technology] will have an impact on how we deliver education.

"Technology has made it so that students, in many cases, are demanding the right to control what they learn, when they learn it, how they learn it, at what pace they learn it, from whom they learn it. And basically they want it to be free."

These types of changes in student expectations mean that institutions must also transform the way of assessing and credentialing student learning. The traditional method certifies students as having learned a topic by virtue of sitting in a seat one hour a day, three days a week for a semester-long course and getting a passing grade.

We are seeing rapid movement toward more individualized approaches for measuring educational achievement, using learning outcomes assessment and demonstrated competencies-based approach.

Duncan used learning a physics equation to illustrate his point.

"If you can figure out how to do that in two weeks, you should be able to move on," said Duncan. "If it takes you 10 weeks, no harm no foul. It is based on achievement, not just time.

"I think that for some types of learning, all institutions - and that includes the NWC - will be over time moving toward this technology-enabled sense of learning outcomes based on individualized types of learning."

While looking at the future of NWC, Duncan believes that he has the team in place to achieve these goals. After his first three months as provost, Duncan is very encouraged by the quality and dedication of the faculty members he has met and the shared sense of responsibility for educating the future leaders of the U.S. and the world.

"I've been deeply impressed with the sense of purpose that everyone here seems to have and the importance of what we do," said Duncan. "We are educating many of the future leaders who will have a lot to say about what the world will look like - a world that all of our children and grandchildren will grow up in."

Duncan served as president of Rollins College from 2004 to 2014, where he held the George D. and Harriet W. Cornell professorship of distinguished presidential leadership. He is an internationally recognized scholar in experimental space physics. He also serves as an authority on issues of international security and counterterrorism and technology-enhanced online learning.

For the last nine years of Duncan's presidency, Rollins was ranked the number one university in the South in its Carnegie classification by U.S. News and World Report.

Here, Duncan sees his role as both an assistant to the president and a long-range visionary for the college.

"The provost [at NWC] serves as a chief operating and academic officer in the sense that the naval leadership of the institution comes here for term appointments for hopefully several years," said Duncan. "The provost, as the chief civilian officer, over time provides a longer-term sense of direction, and long-range planning and implementation."

While Duncan came to NWC from a more traditional school serving a primarily civilian, undergraduate student body, he does have experience working in a military setting. At Los Alamos National Laboratory early in his career, Duncan was exposed to military methods and culture, and says he is quickly relearning the new battle rhythms associated with being part of the military.

"I am learning how to speak military jargon-ese again," Duncan laughed. "It's like relearning a foreign language, but every day the signal-to-noise ratio gets a little stronger."

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