U-M students find unique path to public service through Coast Guard Auxiliary program

UMSI professor Christian Sandvig is featured in this story in The Record. 

When Sam Blum was searching online for ways to get involved with the U.S. Coast Guard as a University of Michigan student, he noticed something missing. 

There were Auxiliary University Program chapters at schools across the country — including smaller institutions — but none at U-M, which sits on the doorstep of the Great Lakes.

“It seemed like a missed opportunity,” said Blum, a senior in mechanical engineering. “We’re right here on the Great Lakes, and there’s a lot of Coast Guard presence here.”

So Blum started making calls and connected with Christian Sandvig, a professor in the School of Information, LSA and Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design who had independently been pursuing the same idea. 

Together, they launched U-M’s Coast Guard Auxiliary University Program — one of only about a dozen such programs in the country, and the only one on the Great Lakes. The unit is preparing to be formally chartered as an official detachment this spring.

The Coast Guard Auxiliary is the uniformed, civilian volunteer arm of the U.S. Coast Guard, conducting activities such as search and rescue, maritime pollution response, environmental education, and disaster response. The auxiliary assists with nearly every Coast Guard mission except law enforcement and direct military operations. 

The Auxiliary University Program brings that volunteer opportunity to college campuses with one key difference from ROTC: There is no service obligation and no commitment to join the Coast Guard after graduation.

“The nice thing about the auxiliary is that because it is volunteer, there’s no commitment,” said Lt. Michael Jenkins, chief of emergency management and force readiness for Coast Guard Sector Detroit and the unit’s active-duty liaison. “If they actually do just enjoy the volunteer work, they can stay with the auxiliary for as long as they want.”

Students drawn to the program fall roughly into two camps: those interested in environmental protection, and those who — as Sandvig puts it simply — like boats. Sandvig, who joined the auxiliary in 2022, describes his own motivation with equal simplicity. 

“I needed an outlet that allows me to spend a certain amount of my time talking and thinking about boats,” said Sandvig, the H. Marshall McLuhan Collegiate Professor of Digital Media. 

John McCalmont, a junior in naval architecture and marine engineering who serves as the unit’s vice president, arrived through a departmental email and stayed because the program combined service with his existing passions. 

“I’ve been around the water my whole life,” McCalmont said. “So for me, it was a very natural thing to say, if I want to give back, this is a way to do it that connects really deeply with a lot of my other passions.”

Part of the program’s mission is to enrich students interested in maritime professions and public service whether they choose to pursue Coast Guard careers or not.

For freshman Victoria Long, an aerospace engineering student, the stakes are higher still. She is eyeing a commission as a Coast Guard officer, with a goal of flying helicopters for search and rescue missions. She joined in January. “Since joining, I’m even more sure, this is absolutely what I want to do,” she said.

The path to becoming a qualified auxiliary boat crew member takes up to two years, beginning with online courses covering Coast Guard procedures, ethics and incident management — members describe them charitably as necessary but unglamorous. 

“Having to spend a couple hours clicking through what is effectively the government’s filing system is never anybody’s favorite thing,” McCalmont said.

The more engaging work comes through multi-hour Saturday sessions covering navigation, knot tying, rules of the road, first aid, and survival gear, with Coast Guard personnel coming to campus to teach. 

Recent graduate Patrick Hullman recalled a water survival exercise vividly: “I got to hug my buddy Hal while we were both shivering and neck deep in water, just trying to share body heat. I was like, this is awesome, dude.”

Navigation training, which includes analog bathymetric charts and compasses to provide a backup in case electronic equipment fails, left a different impression. 

“You feel kind of like a pirate,” Hullman said.

Beyond search and rescue, the program is developing an environmental track. Sandvig noted the unit recently qualified its first student as a pollution responder, meaning that member could now be called to document a spill on the Great Lakes. A marine environmental education specialist track is underway as well.

Jenkins sees Michigan as a natural fit. Coast Guard Sector Detroit’s area of responsibility stretches from Alpena to Vermillion, Ohio, giving students access to icebreaking operations unique to the Great Lakes, helicopter operations through Air Station Detroit, and small boat stations throughout the region. 

“It gives the students and the Coast Guard that opportunity to really understand the organization and hopefully accelerate their career path,” Jenkins said.

The unit’s formal chartering ceremony is expected in late April. Students who joined before that date will be designated “plank owners” — a naval tradition once entitling crew members to a literal plank from a ship’s deck upon decommissioning. 

Sandvig hopes his students don’t take away a transactional attitude toward service. 

“I think it’s important that you’re doing it to help out and not just to get a bullet point on a résumé,” McCalmont said.

Blum, who co-founded the unit and graduates this spring, agrees. “There’s definitely a sense of fulfillment in getting to participate in a larger organization that is doing good work — that you are helping people.”

Interested Michigan faculty and staff can participate as mentors. For students curious about joining, the answer from every member is the same: just show up. The unit meets Wednesdays in North Quad and can be found on Maize Pages. 

For Long, that first step was enough. She had initially been hesitant — unsure whether the program would feel rigid or unwelcoming — but left her first meeting with a different impression entirely. 

“I didn’t realize how close-knit everybody was,” she said. “Even if there are some people who joined the semester before me, you would never be able to tell because of how close the whole group is. And then they’ve really adopted me into that, too.”