Over the last seven years, Tuck School of Business and the United States Military Academy at West Point have developed a relationship focused on negotiation and leadership strategies that apply to both military and business education, according to Jeff Weiss '86, a professor at both Tuck and West Point who has facilitated the unofficial partnership. The relationship features faculty who lecture at both institutions; students from West Point's behavioral science and leadership department who attend Tuck with the intention of becoming West Point instructors; a leadership exchange at West Point for Tuck students; and the Tuck Business Bridge Program, attended by one or two cadets each year.
Excelling in business and the military requires the same "baseline of skills," including cooperation, negotiation and effective communication, Zach Mundell, co-director of the West Point Negotiation Project, said.
Weiss brought his experience teaching at Tuck to West Point through a course on applied negotiations, which has since become a very popular elective among students at West Point, he said. In 2009, he founded the West Point Negotiation Project, an initiative that incorporates negotiation training, research and advising. This program includes coaching sessions for deploying military units, research projects and the production of a handbook for army officers, he said.
Tuck is "receptive and supportive" of army officers interested in pursing business degrees before teaching at West Point, Weiss said. Each year, West Point sponsors a few army officers who wish to pursue graduate degrees in return for a three-year teaching commitment at West Point.
"We certainly like to have students with interesting leadership experiences," Betsy Winslow, senior associate director of Tuck's MBA program, said.
Aram Donigian Tu '08, who founded the West Point Negotiation Project with Weiss, said he had "an incredible education experience" as a Tuck student before teaching at West Point. The relationship between the schools provided him with skills that impacted both his teaching and military careers, and his education has played a key role in his current appointment on the International Security Assistance Forces' counter-corruption task force in Kabul, Afghanistan, he said.
The lessons taught in marketing classes at Tuck, for example, have enabled him to consider "the brand we're trying to develop both as an international force and jointly with Afghanistan," he said.
Army officers also offer a unique perspective and real-world leadership experience that they can share with their peers, Winslow said.
"We can say, This model works, this is the same thing I applied to my company in Iraq, and it works it's not just something that our teacher is teaching us,'" Christina Fanitzi Tu '13 said. Fanitzi is one of three students West Point has sponsored to attend Tuck before returning to teach.
Fanitzi said her interactions with "civilians" at Tuck will help her become a better leader by improving her ability to communicate and deal with different types of people, she said.
Donigian said he worked with Winslow to develop a program to bring Tuck students to West Point for an overnight leadership conference.
The program enables Tuck students to experience "a day in the life of a cadet," Katie Witman Tu '12, who participated in the exchange program in 2011, said. Features include staying in barracks, waking up early and eating rations in the mess hall, according to fellow attendee Dwight Keysor Tu '11.
Many of the cadets who host Tuck students for the overnight conference are interested in attending business school and use the experience as an opportunity to ask MBA candidates about the field, Witman said. Some Tuck students then mentor their host cadets, she said.
The exchange was first launched in April 2010 and consists of leadership and negotiation seminars and "military-style" physical training exercises, Donigian said. This year's exchange is scheduled for the end of April. While the conference is designed to host 20 Tuck students, the number of students interested in the program is typically double or triple that amount, resulting in a lottery that determines who will attend, according to Winslow.
The value of the exchange lies in the "back and forth" that occurs between West Point and Tuck students, Witman said.
The dialogue is especially important given that leaders in both military and business fields face "very complex negotiations" with potentially large risks, Weiss said.
Keysor said he was impressed by the "progressive" nature of West Point's leadership training, which diverges from common "unrealistic and archaic" expectations of military leadership practices.
West Point cadets also have a history of attending the Tuck Bridge program, a four-week pre-MBA summer course for undergraduate students, according to Paul Doscher, the program's business development manager. Approximately 260 students attend the program each year, including an average of two West Point cadets.
West Point and Tuck work together to fund the cadets' experiences, he said.
In addition to exposing cadets to business school practices, the partnership strives to help a "large population of liberal arts students to begin to understand more about military and leadership through the prism of these young military cadets," Doscher said.
Tuck and West Point faculty also deliver guest lectures to enhance the partnership, according to Winslow, who has recruited six professors from West Point to teach an extreme negotiation class as part of her "Comparative Models of Leadership" course.
