First Father/Daughter Duo To Earn Master’s Degrees Together At NWC
By Ana Bottary
@anabottary
Monica Iannacone has always looked up to her father Al, who spent 27 years in the Navy, and currently serves as a Navy civilian. She says her father’s inspiration is what led her to peruse her own career as a Navy Reserve lieutenant, and enroll at the Naval War College in Newport.
"I joined ROTC with his guidance, and then became a service officer and it was just natural for me to go to the naval war college as well," Monica says.
Friday, they became the first father daughter duo to receive Masters Degrees at NWC,
after spending the past three years going through it’s college distance education program.
"It’s amazing to be here on fathers day weekend, to celebrate graduating from the naval war college. I can’t think of a better father’s day gift," she adds.
Monica enrolled in the program first and then convinced al that he would be perfect for it as well.
"We enrolled together and here we are. It was a blessing, a tremendous opportunity and since I still work for the department of the navy it’s relevant. It’s relevant to what I do, it’s relevant to what she does," Says Al.
Monica says their long nights of studying were tough, but her fathers expertise helped them through.
"There were definitely many times where he was like come on over for dinner we need to study, you need to study lets go over this. Particularly when we did the strategy and war class together because it was all war history, military history, and that’s what he is best at," she says.
Al says he could not be more proud of his daughter’s achievements.
"Because she is following in my foot steps, we have had 35 years of continual service in our family, so yeah its stuff that you kind of tear up a little bit about.”
Going forward, Al says he’s a life long learner, and plans to serve as a navy civilian as long as he can. As for Monica, she is being promoted to Lieutenant Commander in the up coming weeks.
©WLNE-TV / ABC6 2016
