They call her a ‘military brat.’ Bouncing from base to base, wherever the Navy sent her father, Stacy Pearsall never had a place to call home.

Her family’s history in the armed forces dates back to the American Revolution. So when her scholarship fell through at the Art Institute of Colorado, she enlisted, too.

Seven years later, the Department of Defense named her the 2003 Military Photographer of the Year. This August, she entered the elite military photojournalism program at Syracuse University.

The program, which trains 15 still photographers and 15 videographers, returned to campus in August after a yearlong hiatus to reassess the program. Its participants are active-duty military photojournalists who are selected to study for two semesters at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

The MPJ students take the full Newhouse photography major – 10 courses – in one academic year, a load they say is much more rigorous than that of the average undergraduate. The most important distinction, though, is that taking classes here is their job.

‘They’re the classic non-traditional students,’ said Anthony Golden, chair of the photography department. ‘They bring an entirely different dimension to their studies.’

For the year they study at Newhouse, the students are paid their regular salary – their only duty is to complete the military’s most prestigious photojournalism training. The program, funded by the Department of Defense, was created at Syracuse in 1963 and has remained there since, except for a five-year stint at the Rochester Institute of Technology, another esteemed photography school, and during last year’s hiatus.

The Department of Defense awarded Newhouse a new, five-year contract and the program now uses all digital equipment – the photographers only use film as backup.

To Pearsall, the most significant part of her award is that she’s the first woman to win it since the 1970s. To her peers, it’s that she won it before she trained at Newhouse. Almost every winner does it the other way around.

‘She’s like the prodigy,’ said Sara Wood, one of three Army photographers who have participated in the program in its 41-year history.

But the fact is that every photojournalist who makes to it Syracuse is one of the best in the business. Each branch of the military handpicks them after a portfolio review or a decision by a selection board.

Some, like Pearsall, pave their way to Newhouse with their work in the field. For Michael Watkins, a 27-year-old in the Navy, the wait was much longer. He put in his application for the MPJ program as soon as he joined the armed forces.

‘I had to spend my first year and a half landing planes on aircraft carriers,’ Watkins said. He learned this summer – with just a few weeks notice – that he’d be transferred to Syracuse.

By no means, however, is photojournalism the easy way out. When they’re not studying here, the MPJs take on all the risk and responsibility of military service. Each photojournalist has agreed to serve two years after completion of the Newhouse program, but none seem to need much coercion. Pearsall spent six months in Baghdad before she came to SU, and many MPJ students lust for a combat camera position when they finish their training.

‘You’re a soldier first, then a photojournalist,’ Wood said.

For the next seven months, they’re students. And that means taking undergraduate classes, spending the day on campus and interacting with students who are often much younger and, in some cases, less mature.

Brian Ferguson is 26 years old, and he’s done time – though never earned a degree – at Auburn University and Troy State University in Alabama. He’s worked in the Air Force for four years. Twice a week he sits in COM 107, the introductory course for first-year Newhouse students, surrounded by freshmen and sophomores.

Sometimes, he says, the age gap trips him up. He talks about waking up early after a long night of drinking, and then realizes everyone around him is 18. (If they felt his pain, they didn’t mention it.) When he went to school before, he slacked off. Now the tables have turned.

‘The professors might look at us as a double-edged sword,’ Pearsall said. The MPJ students are more dedicated, for sure, but their real-world experience also means they’re more likely to challenge the ideas and techniques presented in class.

David Sutherland, a photography professor who teaches the military photojournalists, said he recognizes the intensity with which the MPJs take on their assignments. Because it’s a job for them, he said, they’re well ahead of the students whose parents are just pushing them through school.

Outside of class, the photojournalists’ interaction with the undergraduates is limited. Many of the older students live in the suburbs with their families, though they often make it to Taps – the Westcott Street bar – for the weekly Photo Night. This camaraderie is a natural result of their common interests and experiences in Syracuse – for the few months they’ve been here, it’s been ‘us hanging out with us.’

Watkins, the 27-year-old Navy photographer, rents an apartment near the corner of Euclid and Sumner avenues. He loves the college-town experience, one he never thought he’d have, and calls this year his ‘second shot at life.’

He and his roommate, another military photojournalist, often sit on their porch and share a beer, soaking up as much of the college atmosphere as they can before it’s back to the real world.

Watkins appreciates school a lot more now, he said, than if he’d enrolled immediately after high school.

He’s also working a lot harder, taking five Newhouse courses in a single semester, when undergraduates rarely take more than two. Wood says school is harder than her old job, editing the base newspaper in Fort Irwin, Calif. Pearsall says it often keeps her in on weekend nights.

‘She’s the elusive one,’ Watkins said. ‘We have to beg her to come to our parties.’

‘And then she leaves at 10,’ Ferguson said.

But for Pearsall and her fellow photographers, school is the year’s top priority. After this, each of them will leave Syracuse destined for a new, temporary home.

‘We don’t really know where we’re going to end up,’ Ferguson said.

There are a few options: an editorship at a military magazine, like the Navy’s ‘All Hands’ or the Air Force’s ‘Airman;’ a domestic job, perhaps as a White House photographer; or a deployment as a base photographer or combat cameraman.

Down the road, Watkins sees himself working for a civilian news organization – after all, the photojournalists’ work is already printed in newspapers around the world. But he’s hoping for a combat camera position. It will allow him to travel and, more importantly, get off that aircraft carrier. Perhaps he is inspired by his colleagues’ descriptions of Iraq.

‘It’s pretty breathtaking,’ Pearsall said. ‘The countryside is just gorgeous.’

Many of the photographers plan to use their Syracuse credits toward a degree – Pearsall has been taking military night classes for all seven years of her tenure in the Air Force. Wherever they end up, the students can rest assured that their experience at Newhouse puts them among the cream of the crop in their field.

‘They came in as photographers for the military,’ Golden said. ‘And they leave as photojournalists. This is their mission. This is their job.’

Published on October 20, 2004 at 12:00 pm