National WWII Museum honors ASU graduates over 25th anniversary weekend
On June 6, graduates and alumni of ASU’s World War II studies program traveled to New Orleans for a graduation celebration at the National World War II Museum, which coincided with the museum’s 25th anniversary and the 81st anniversary of D-Day. Graduates, their families and friends were invited to three days of programming that included guided tours, networking opportunities, lunch-and-learn sessions and chances to speak with WWII veterans and survivors. Photo courtesy National WWII Museum
This June, more than 30 graduates and alumni of ASU’s World War II studies online Master of Arts program traveled to New Orleans for a graduation celebration at The National World War II Museum.
This year’s celebration coincided with the museum’s 25th anniversary and the 81st anniversary of D-Day. Graduates, their families and friends were invited to three days of programming that included guided tours, networking opportunities, lunch-and-learn sessions and chances to speak with WWII veterans and survivors.
Allen Rosso, a student from Mansfield, Ohio, was among this year’s attendees and says the program was “absolutely life-changing.” After graduating in 2023, he quit his job in alumni relations and now works for the Jewish Historical Society of Delaware, where he is currently digitizing a collection of WWII letters.
“The most impactful thing (from the weekend) was all the connection — with faculty, fellow graduates and the museum — and the fact that you could really witness the collaboration between the museum and ASU; it was on full display,” Rosso said.
Joan Russell, a 2023 graduate from San Francisco, also attended this year’s ceremony. Though she has been to the museum before, she said the blend of activities for graduates and anniversary programming made the weekend extra special.
This is the program’s second graduation ceremony at the museum, with the first taking place in 2023, four years after the program launched. The collaboration dates back to 2017, and the concept for it goes back even further — to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Michael Bell, executive director of the museum’s Institute for the Study of War and Democracy, said this is when the museum realized it needed to become an institution without walls and expand its reach and accessibility.
“You saw this similarly in the COVID experience — that if you’re only relying on people to come to your museum, to experience it and to benefit from those insights, then you’re missing a potential, really democratic way to reach a lot of people,” Bell said. “And I think that seems to be a philosophy that meshes very closely with Arizona State’s leadership.”
The museum sought to create long-distance learning opportunities for K–12, undergraduate and graduate spaces, said Yan Mann, WWII studies program lead. While searching for partnerships, Richard Adkerson, the museum’s chairman at the time, was on a flight with ASU President Michael Crow. The two began speaking, and when Crow said ASU could implement what they were planning, the one-of-a-kind partnership was born.
“This was also when ASU Online was really starting to become a more embedded part of the university overall,” said Peter Van Cleave, director of online programs for ASU's School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies. “And so we already had the infrastructure, we already had the capabilities of doing this in a way that no other university had at that moment.”
Since its inception, the program has only grown, introducing additional courses, a Holocaust and genocide studies graduate certificate and Universal Learner Courses, as well as plans for further expansion.
The partnership with the museum creates an opportunity for the degree program to focus solely on a particular event — unlike any other program at the humanities level, Van Cleave said.
The degree provides students who may have personal connections to the war, such as family members who served, a way to understand more about their experiences. He also said it provides students interested in learning more about the war itself an opportunity to do so that is unmatched anywhere else.
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