When Rice University senior Daniel Upp graduated, he wasn’t worried about looking for a job. He’s had one lined up since he was a freshman. As a member of the university’s Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (NROTC), Upp is required to serve at least four years in the navy after he graduates. His first full-time job is a sailor’s dream—he’s been assigned a foreign exchange tour of duty on an Argentine ship and will be cruising the Atlantic Ocean for five months, making ports of call in Canada, Holland, Belgium, Brazil, and France.

“I got a very amazing opportunity,” says Upp, who will be helping in the daily operations of the ship and in fostering international relations. After receiving his degree from Rice, he was commissioned as an ensign officer—the equivalent of a second lieutenant in the army. “I was very lucky to get that assignment in South America,” Upp says. “I am sure it was based on my language abilities.” Upp speaks Spanish, Japanese, Polish, French, and Latin and has studied Old English, Sanskrit, and Mapudungun (a Native American language spoken in southern Chile).

Upp belongs to a small but very select group of students who make up the Rice NROTC unit, a consortium of four universities. Of the 43 students in the program, 19 are from Rice; the others come from the University of Houston, Houston Baptist University, and the University of Texas Health Science Center. The program offers students an opportunity to earn a commission as an officer in the U.S. Navy or Marine Corps.

“We develop students to be fighting war specialists,” says Captain James York, who is in charge of the Rice NROTC and teaches naval science courses. Students, he explains, learn to be officers on ships, submarines, and airplanes.

Since the Rice NROTC was started in 1941, about 700 students have gone through the program, and at least two—Austin B. Scott., Jr. ’55 and John T. Mitchell ’64—have reached the rank of admiral. The number of Rice students enrolled in the program has remained steady, averaging about 20 a year. The September 11 terrorist attack did not create a rush of candidates to the NROTC (there was one student who joined immediately after the attack), but the event did raise the presence of the group on campus, says York.

“Before September 11, NROTC uniforms on campus were kind of a novelty,” he explains. “After September 11, people on campus were more supportive of the students when they wore the uniforms.”

Upp adds: “I have gotten positive reactions. People have a lot of questions about this program. Most people have been very appreciative and supportive of what I am doing.”

Rice enjoys an excellent reputation with the navy. Many of its graduates, especially those majoring in engineering, join the navy’s nuclear power program and do very well, says York.

An attractive aspect of the Rice NROTC unit is that it offers students military training in a regular college campus environment, unlike the naval academy, which completely immerses the students in military life. “The naval academy students live the military system seven days a week, and our folks live it once or twice a week,” explains York. “Our kids want to enjoy college life a bit more.”

York notes that students at the naval academy do have an advantage initially when they join a fleet, because they better understand the military system. But he adds that it doesn’t take long for Rice graduates to get up to speed.

Rice NROTC students are appointed midshipmen and pursue regular academic courses. As part of NROTC regiment, they must attend drill practice once a week, dress in uniform on Tuesdays, and do physical training once a week at 6 a.m. They also must take one naval science course per semester. The courses include naval orientation, naval weapons, leadership and ethics, and the evolution of warfare.

Every summer, midshipmen also must attend a one-month, paid training session on a navy ship, submarine, or aircraft. These training sessions, affectionately called “cruises” by the midshipmen, vary every summer. The first is a “sampler” in which students spend one week with each of the four branches of the navy: surface (ship), subsurface (submarine), aviation, and the marines.

“Each group makes it as fun as possible with the hope that you will eventually join that branch,” says Upp. “You get to shoot off a lot of weapons and ride in the back seats of planes.” Upp spent his first cruise on a ship off the San Diego port.

Following the sampler, students spend their next cruise on a ship that teaches them the life of an enlisted crewmember. Upp traveled to Mayport, Florida, for that experience. “Even though we graduate as officers,” says Upp, “it is important that we understand what the enlisted have to go through, because we are supposed to be leading them. We need to know what their life is like.”

In the third and final cruise, midshipmen spend time with the branch of the navy of their choice and learn about the duties of an officer. Upp picked a destroyer in Pearl Harbor. “In this cruise,” says Upp, “you shadow a young officer and see what he does and how he works. You get to learn what it is like to be an officer in your field.”

One of the most alluring features of the NROTC is the financial assistance it has to offer. There are two types. The college program is for students who join the NROTC during their freshman year and receive financial support starting in their sophomore or junior year. The scholarship program is the more generous one and offers a four-year deal that pays for tuition, books, and a monthly stipend on a sliding scale. Freshmen receive $250 a month; seniors, $350 a month.

For many students, the NROTC offers the perfect combination of a free education and a college environment in which to train to become an officer. Upp says he has wanted to become a naval officer since he was in high school, because it runs in the family. Three of his grandparents were in the navy during World War II. His father’s mother was a cryptographer, deciphering secret messages.

“I considered the U.S. Naval Academy, but the more I found out about it, the more I realized that it didn’t sound like a lot of fun,” Upp explains. “If you are looking for a total military education, the Naval Academy is a great place, because you are learning military things all the time. I was looking for a more all-around education that was focused on what I wanted to study.”

Upp has a fascination with languages and majored in linguistics with the intent of becoming a translator. He says he will probably pursue graduate work in this field. Being in the NROTC for four years was good for him, says Upp, especially now that he has graduated. “A lot of my friends are going crazy, working on their resumés and applying for jobs. Since I was a freshman, I haven’t had to worry about any of that.”

Julia Weber, who graduated from Rice with a double major in psychology and French, joined NROTC in her freshman year. “I decided midway through my senior year of high school that I wanted to do something for my country,” she says. She decided to try the NROTC, knowing that she could always quit. The NROTC allows students to drop the program after a year or anytime during their college career. Four years later, she is certain she made the right choice.

“I have learned a lot, and I have had a lot of incredible experiences that I couldn’t get anywhere else,” she says. Weber spent one summer on the USS Enterprise, working in the ship’s nuclear reactor division. Another summer, she was aboard the USS Gunston Hall, an amphibious ship used for transporting marines.

Learning to be a leader was invaluable, she says. “The leadership classes taught me how to handle people, how to handle different situations, how to plan and organize people, and how to always be responsible for my actions,” she says. Weber was a company commander at Rice in charge of a company composed mainly of men. “All the guys treated me with utmost respect, though occasionally I wish there were more female officers, because I want to know more about how it is to be a female in the navy.”

This fall Weber will attend a program in Rhode Island, where she will learn the engineering aspects of a ship, and then she will be assigned to a ship in Pearl Harbor. After that, she plans to study for a year in a nuclear power school and then serve two years as an officer in the nuclear reactor department of an aircraft carrier.

Those planned five years in the navy, Weber says, will help her decide if she will make a career out of the military. “Starting your career as a military officer earns you a great deal of respect throughout the world,” she says. “You have technical skills and leadership skills.”