Program Accreditation and Outcomes

The mission of the United States Naval Academy is to:

Develop midshipmen morally, mentally and physically and to imbue them with the highest ideals of duty, honor and loyalty in order to graduate leaders who are dedicated to a career of naval service and have potential for future development in mind and character to assume the highest responsibilities of command, citizenship and government.

The Naval Academy produces officers who serve in the United States Navy and Marine Corps. Therefore, the goals and outcomes of all the academic programs, including the Aerospace Engineering program, support the Naval Academy mission. 

The Academy’s mission is the basis for its Strategic Plan, which undergoes periodic evaluation to ensure it reflects the Navy’s evolving goals and needs. Central to the Strategic Plan are the expected attributes of an Academy graduate. Irrespective of their specific discipline attributes, all departments and components at the Naval Academy must assess and evaluate their performance in terms of how they foster the development of these attributes in their students.

As codified in U.S. Naval Academy Strategic Plan 2030, the Academy expects graduates to be:

1. SELFLESS – Places the needs of the Nation, the Navy, peers, and subordinates before personal recognition or reward.

2. PROFESSIONAL – Dedicated to the profession of arms, traditions and values of the Naval Service, and the constitutional foundation of the United States of America.

3. RESILIENT – Possesses the toughness, grit, and perseverance to withstand and recover quickly from difficult conditions.

4. ADAPTABLE – Recognizes, assesses, and understands new conditions, ideas, environments, and cultures and makes appropriate adjustments to succeed.

5. LEARNED – Broadly educated in academic and professional fields with focused disciplinary knowledge that enables the application of skills in complex and changing conditions through a lifetime of learning.

6. COURAGEOUS – Possesses the moral, mental, and physical strength to do that which is right, with determination, even in the face of temptation or adversity.

7. HONORABLE – Does what is right; conducts oneself in the highest ethical manner and is accountable for one’s professional and personal behavior.

8. ARTICULATE – Clearly conveys ideas and specialized information through written and spoken word.

9. INNOVATIVE – Thinks critically to find and develop creative solutions for an increasingly complex world.

Responsibility for fostering these graduate attributes is allocated across the Academy’s six Centers of Excellence, two of which bear most directly on the academic majors: CoE 1 – Academic Excellence; and CoE 4 – Professional, Leadership, and Moral Excellence.

Within the requirements flow down just described, the mission of the Aerospace Engineering Department is to:

Provide the Navy and Marine Corps with engineering graduates who will grow to fill engineering, management and leadership roles in the Navy, government and industry, while maturing their fascination with air and space systems.

Our mission is currently pursued via our departmental vision:

Mission fulfilment requires knowledgeable, dedicated, well-supported faculty guiding midshipmen as they conceive, design, implement and operate effective aerospace systems in a modern, team-based environment.

Statement of Program Educational Objectives

We have established three Program Educational Objectives (PEOs) for the USNA Aerospace Engineering program to clarify the targets by which we measure success in achieving our mission. Our three PEOs are to produce junior officers who within five to ten years after graduation will have:

1. Professionally fulfilled key roles in the implementation, operation, and functional evaluation of complex aerospace or related technical systems while serving as technical subject-matter experts in team-based naval applications.

2. Demonstrated comprehensive knowledge of fundamental engineering principles while fulfilling engineering and project management roles in the conception, development, and maintenance of aerospace or related technical systems under conflicting constraints.

3. Successfully furthered their professional development in in-service or post-service technical leadership roles by obtaining warfare community specific qualifications or designations, certifications, or continued education as evidenced by completion of Naval Service professional schools or graduate school programs.

Our PEOs should be interpreted within the context of the specialized naval career fields most of our Aerospace graduates enter. 

Every USNA graduate leads teams operating advanced technology systems during their years as a junior officer. Not every operator need be an engineer, but every command needs engineers to serve as its technical experts. Being an aerospace engineer provides the specific technical capacity to more readily excel in the operational comprehension, application and management of aerospace systems.

Program Student Outcomes (PSOs) for the Aerospace Engineering major are the seven ABET Criterion 3 Student Outcomes, enumerated below. From a systems engineering perspective, PEOs define requirements that flow down to shape the PSOs as performance requirements. Attainment of these outcomes prepares our graduates to attain our PEOs while serving as junior officers in the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. Students graduating from the Aerospace Engineering program will have: