Growing up in Colorado Springs, Holloman was immersed in military culture. He graduated from high school in 2010 and enrolled in the New Mexico Military Institute. He went on to earn a B.A. in history at the University of New Mexico, and after enlisting with the Army, he served two tours of duty as a squadron communications officer in Afghanistan and South Korea.

Despite his years in the Army, Holloman never thought he’d make it to West Point. But In 2019, after being promoted to the rank of captain, he was accepted for a teaching position at the famed institution, formally called the United States Military Academy. 

And thanks to a partnership between West Point and Fordham’s Graduate School of Education (GSE), Holloway soon found himself doing something else he’d never dreamed of—attending school in New York City.

On May 21, he and fellow Army captain Rob Berchild will graduate with a Master of Science in Education in Curriculum and Teaching from the GSE.

“I was super nervous, because I had been out of college for about seven years, and Army education and civilian education are two very different things. It was pretty intimidating, but it was really good for me to see,” he said, especially given his lack of familiarity with the Northeast.

“I think one of the things that people don’t do enough is see different demographics and enjoy different cultures within the U.S. It’s been a blast, and I’ve learned a ton.”

Fordham and West Point established the partnership in 2016 to give military science instructors like Holloman the tools to teach soldiers how to navigate battlefields that are more complex than ever.

For Holloman, classes such as Creativity and Teaching, which he took with associate professor John Craven, Ph.D., were invaluable. Not only did he gain the skills and perspectives to be a better instructor, but he also found himself with a platform to share what is admittedly a different perspective, having been deployed twice and moved eight times.

“There were times in class where I’d sit there [in class]and people would say, ‘I can’t understand why this is this way.’ And I’d be thinking, ‘Because that’s not how the world works,’” he said, noting that sometimes he got the sense Craven was thinking, “Josh, why don’t you just say it? 

Holloman did share his thoughts, and said that he feels the experience “helps the people see the world from a different lens.”

His time at Fordham also taught him to contemplate what he is offering his cadets as in instructor, he said.  

“How can I take virtual reality and apply it to the classroom? How can I design that to make it an individualized learning environment for that student? Am I creating an environment for them to thrive, or am I creating an environment that is inhibiting their chance to learn? Am I asking the right questions?” he said.

“That’s what Dr. Craven opened up for us.”

Craven said it was a pleasure to see Holloman, who took several classes with him, go from being somewhat intimidated by a different style of education, in a different area of the country, to adjust, adapt, and ultimately thrive. It’s what GSE hopes to do with all the West Point captains who take the two-hour train ride to Lincoln Center once a week to become the best instructors they can be.

“These captains are taking these young cadets and teaching them leadership skills, communication skills, credible thinking skills and a sense of service to the country,” he said.

Although the civilian world and the military world are very different, Craven said there are a lot more areas of commonality than many realize.

“We’re fighting for social justice and they’re fighting for the country, so we actually share this sense of service to others. That shared connection is formed when we have education majors and teachers and administrators interacting with captains from West Point.”

After graduation, Holloman will return full time to West Point, where he will be an adviser for cadets who are choosing whether they want to pursue a career in military intelligence, cyber security, or signal corps (communications). He will also become a full instructor in the department of military instruction.

He’s grateful both for the degree he’s earned and the fact that being a full-time student brought him closer to his wife Kaysha, who is also earning a master’s in education this year, from Grand Canyon University.

“It was fun for us, because we could actually talk about things when I didn’t understand something. She’d, be like, ‘You know hun, this isn’t the Army, this is how a classroom works. This is how you should look at it,’” he said.

He’s also feeling a bit of disbelief that his life has taken this path.

“A kid from Colorado Springs never thinks they’re going be walking around Manhattan, like in the movies. It’s a pretty awesome gift the Army gave me.”

So when that changed during her fourth year of ROTC at Fordham, she applied right away—and became one of the first female officers in the nation selected for close-combat roles that had always been the province of men.

At her commissioning in May 2016, she was feeling the weight of expectations. “I was really nervous,” said Kim, GABELLI ’16. “I was thinking, ‘I hope I did the right thing.”

More than a year later, 2nd Lt. Kim is with the U.S. Army’s 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, Texas, commanding a platoon of 16 people—including two women—and four tanks. She leads them every morning in physical training, starting at 6:30, and oversees the other routines of Army life, like doing preventive maintenance on the tanks or firing on the rifle and pistol range.

She’s formed a rapport with the men under her command, and has found that her gender has little impact on how she’s received in the Army. When a superior officer in her unit asked if she was being treated differently compared with men, “I said ‘no,’ which is true,” she said.

But she remains keenly aware that she’s among the vanguard of women in combat roles, a fact that only makes her strive harder. “I feel like there’s always something you can do better, and if I don’t do that 100 percent, or 110 percent, then I might be messing it up for people coming after me,” she said.

Early Ambitions

The opening of combat roles to women began with a three-year study across the armed services, culminating in the Dec. 3, 2015, announcement by then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter that women would be allowed in all military occupations, without exception, as long as they qualify for them.

“They’ll be able to serve as Army Rangers and Green Berets, Navy SEALs, Marine Corps infantry, Air Force parajumpers, and everything else that was previously open only to men,” he said in a statement.

Kim had grown up in northern New Jersey playing war games with her older brother and his friends, and her interest in joining the military was fueled by the Sept. 11 attacks, in which some of her friends’ family members perished.

She came to Fordham after a recruiter recommended ROTC over enlistment. “What shocked me most was waking up so early,” she said, recalling one 3:45 a.m. wake-up dictated by a first sergeant who had the cadets get up progressively earlier whenever anyone was late for their morning formation. But she quickly grew into the program, sometimes traveling far afield to seek out challenges and gain insight into the workings of the military.

In addition to her summer training at U.S. military bases, she did a cultural immersion and language proficiency program in South Korea that involved her in that country’s army for part of a summer, while also giving her a chance to catch up with extended family members there.

For another summer, she shadowed a lieutenant in air defense artillery at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Then, in her senior year, she sought the high-level S3 position within the Fordham ROTC cadre, in which she oversaw all the battalion’s operations and training—everything from the unit’s physical workout plans to field training exercises to the ROTC military ball.

It was hard work—“like a full-time job,” she said. “But I really enjoyed ROTC. I enjoy taking charge and helping plan. After working super-hard on things, seeing everything executed and working out well in the end is a great feeling.”

Forging a Career

Kim was a senior at the time of Secretary Carter’s announcement. She became one of 13 female lieutenants picked for infantry or armor out of 29 nationwide who applied. Another nine female lieutenants, from West Point, were also admitted to combat roles.

At her commissioning, she was awarded the General Jack Keane Outstanding Leader Award, named for the Fordham alumnus and former Army vice chief of staff. A speaker hailed her by name for “blazing this trail” for other women. And she took that seriously, wanting to make a good first impression for other women following the same path.

“I was working out every day, if not twice a day,” she said. “Fordham ROTC really helped me out. They gave me a lot of gear to help prepare.”

But during her first training stint, an armor officers’ leadership course at Fort Benning, Georgia, her fears “just kind of died down, the more I got to know my [male]peers,” since they had generally grown up with women as equals, she said.

The women officers tended to win acceptance in this type of initial training, said Ellen Haring, Ph.D., a retired Army colonel and senior fellow with the advocacy group Women in International Security. She interviewed Kim as part of an ongoing five-year study of the first cohort of female officers in infantry and armor.

Instructors who initially thought “this is never going to work” were impressed by how motivated and determined the women officers were, she said.

“[The instructors were] able to see that there were women capable of doing these jobs,” Haring said. “Now they’ve completely changed their minds and have become, in many cases, strong advocates for them.”

Back at Fordham, Kim has set an inspiring example for other female cadets, said Lt. Col. Samuel Linn, an artillery officer and professor of military science with the Fordham ROTC program. “We definitely have women that are very interested in combat roles,” and Kim’s achievement makes that possibility more real for them, he said.

Before coming to Fordham, he saw women perform “extremely well” as fire support officers accompanying infantry companies. He said Army teams can benefit from the diversity of thought and experience that comes with the greater integration of women.

“I think anytime you’re trying to create a high-performing team like we are in the Army, if you’re only pulling from half the population, you’re probably leaving a lot on the table,” he said.

Doing the Job

After finishing the leadership course for armor officers, Kim underwent a course for tank commanders and a reconnaissance course, where she was the only woman on the Commandant’s List (comprising the top 20 percent of the class).

After her arrival at Fort Hood in April, a superior officer told her “‘I don’t [care]if you’re female or male; I’m going to keep you in this position if you can do your job, and if not, I can fire you and put you somewhere else,’” she said.

The biggest part of the job is “getting to know your crew, and seeing how everyone operates,” she said. She and her crew have undergone a series of training exercises in the tanks, culminating in a qualifying exercise in which they earned 950 out of 1,000 possible points. “It was my first one, so I was pretty happy about it,” she said.

Kim hopes to eventually join Special Forces or serve in one of the support teams that accompanies Special Forces when it’s encountering foreign cultures during a military operation. In the meantime, she’s always aware of the trail that she’s helping to blaze.

“I feel like there’s a lot on my shoulders,” she said. “So I want to continue to do well.”

It would take more than a century for the Rams to score a win against the Black Knights.

Up until World War I, most East coast colleges played on a small scale. This so-called “infant era” brought Fordham together with Princeton, Columbia, NYU, Navy, and, of course, Army. It wasn’t until after the war that the Rams developed their legendary status. In 1936, sportswriter Grantland “Granny” Rice referred to Fordham’s front line as the Fordham Wall, which shortly thereafter evolved into the Seven Blocks of Granite with the legendary Vince Lombardi, FCRH ’37, anchoring the famous offensive line.

Lombardi—From Campus to Post

After a brief stint as a student at Fordham Law, Lombardi worked as a high school teacher and football coach in New Jersey before returning to Rose Hill as the team’s assistant coach in 1947. West Point scooped him up the following year, thus setting the stage for a contentious Fordham-Army matchup.Before he left for West Point, however, Lombardi recruited Andy Lukac, FCRH ’51, for the Rams. Lukac rose to team captain and played the last game, in 1949, between the two teams before before Fordham discontinued its football program following the 1954 season (a hiatus that would last until 1964).

That 1949 game wasn’t pretty. It was cold and rainy, and the field was pure mud. The Black Knights shut out the Rams, 45-0, at West Point before a capacity crowd of 27,000 in Michie Stadium.

“They were tops in the country and we were just coming up out of the doldrums, but we were undefeated at the time,” said Lukac. “Lombardi was up there, and he knew all our weaknesses. Army did us in, but it was a day to remember, you can put it that way.”

Lukac said that he’s convinced that there were more penalties called in that Fordham-Army game than in any other game “in the history of football!”

“They’d hit us and we’d hit them back,” he said. “We had a lot of noses broken on that day, it was like a boxing match. At the end of the game everyone is OK, but during the game it’s another story.”

And 62 Years Later …

Lukac said the postgame civility among players made perfect sense for two institutions that prized good sportsmanship. It’s a tradition that Jack Keane, GABELLI ’66, a retired four-star general, witnessed firsthand when Fordham and West Point finally met again 62 years later, in 2011, amid a freak October snowstorm that dropped six inches on the field. As with the game six decades before, it wasn’t pretty. Fordham lost, 55-0.

By game’s end, the frigid stands were nearly empty. But a West Point tradition dictates that the home team appear before the corps of cadets and sing their alma mater, said Keane.

“When the West Point guys went over to the cadets, the Fordham guys saw what was happening and went over with them,” said Keane. “The superintendent, General Dave Huntoon, was standing next to me. He looked at me and said, ‘Wow, that’s something. You guys really understand. You get it.’ I said, ‘Yep. Yeah, we get it.’”

Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, has said on many occasions that Fordham and West Point share a common purpose. Keane agrees.

“Both institutions have a strong moral foundation,” said Keane. “It’s very sincere and very genuine.”

Sometimes a Win, Always a Ram

Despite having served nearly 40 years in the Army, Keane said he still identifies as a Ram. He reveled when, in 2015, more than a century after their first game, Fordham finally beat West Point, 37-35.

At the time, 84-year-old Lukac was also watching the game near the end zone.

“It was a moment of everything coming together,” he said. “We were just so happy, that the rest of the season didn’t seem that important really.”

Now 86 and a little less mobile, Lukac said he still plans to be in the stands on Sept. 1.

Moises Mura, a Fordham ROTC cadet who served 11 years in the Army as staff sergeant and is now a junior in the School of Professional and Continuing Studies, will also be there. Like Keane, Mura said his years in the Army haven’t diluted his loyalty to the Rams.

“I never called a university home, so I’m excited to do that,” he said. “I’m a student at Fordham and I intend to be a Fordham alumnus, so I’ll definitely be rooting for Fordham.”

 

Thanks to a new partnership with Fordham, they’ll learn the best ways to share that knowledge with the next generation of Army leaders.

Fordham’s Graduate School of Education (GSE) has signed a five-year agreement with the military academy to train its officers in the latest in educational curriculum and pedagogy. The five members of the first cohort, who will begin instruction in June, will earn a Master of Science in Education in Curriculum and Teaching.

Military science is a field that involves decisions such as what piece of artillery to use in a battle, or how to strategize to retake an urban area under siege. Unlike their counterparts in traditional arts and sciences fields, military science instructors haven’t been required to have education beyond a bachelor’s degree. The program will give them a chance to earn one.

“At West Point, they are developing the leaders of tomorrow’s armed forces, so you want people who are up-to-date and really top-notch in understanding their field and their work—but that doesn’t mean they’ve necessarily been trained to be teachers,” said Virginia Roach, EdD, dean of GSE.

“We have innovative pedagogies and approaches to teaching and learning that are just emerging through the research of our faculty; we are excited to implement them through this new program.”

Major John W. Spencer, strategic initiatives integrator/department strategic planner in the Department of Military Instruction at West Point, said that today’s battlefields are more complex than ever; instruction needs to reflect that.

“We’re creating people who are familiar with complexity, who can operate with complexity but still solve problems. Critical thinkers and problem-solvers are really everything. From the military domain, that has huge life-or-death consequences,” he said.

“West Point has the world’s foremost leader-development program, so we seek out partnerships with people who we know are highly respected in the domains of these topics—higher education being one of them. Fordham is the right place and [has]the right people.”

Pat Shea-Bischoff

Ciro Stefano (Chief, Military Science Division

Ciro Stefano (Chief, Military Science Division

GSE Assistant Professor Rhonda Bondie, PhD, program coordinator for the master’s in curriculum and teaching, said that the GSE-West Point program will draw heavily on psychology because its curriculum focuses on motivation and problem solving. Technology will be covered too, as the academy uses simulations in training exercises.

The partnership came about thanks to the Viola Foundation, whose work focuses on national security, education, and faith-based initiatives. (Founder Vincent Viola, a West Point graduate, is a member of the Fordham Board of Trustees and the father of two Fordham graduates.)

Spencer said the foundation had previously helped the academy convert a class curriculum, History of the Military Art (From Plato to NATO), into a digital text.

Tim Strabbing, the executive director of the foundation who helped the two institutions connect initially, said that the new collaboration should “equip young officers to be even more effective teachers” than they already are.

Roach said that having GSE professors teach experts how to share their knowledge is a model she plans to replicate with other organizations, such as the NYPD, FDNY, and private corporations. As the GSE did with West Point, she noted that the college can tailor its curriculum to meet the specific needs of a partner organization.

“There are a number of different venues in which our understanding about how to teach to the full class and make sure everybody is engaged—and how to develop that instruction and execute it—can be a great contribution to the community,” she said.