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| Home : Volume 31 : Winter 2005 : | |
| Looking in on COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING alumni | |
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Dean Nilsen studied chemical engineering at UW-Madison, thinking it would lead to a rewarding career in industry. Instead, upon graduation, a meeting with a Navy recruiter led him to sea.
"I received my commission in May of 1987 and then started my nuclear power training," Nilsen says. "It's been a wonderful time. I thought maybe I would serve my initial five years and then continue on in engineering but I loved every minute of my time in the Navy and so 17 and a half years later, I'm still here."
His hard work and dedication earned him command of an Ohio-class submarine, the U.S.S. Tennessee (Gold) in September 2004. It's an awesome responsibility considering Nilsen is in charge of about 180 sailors who quietly ply the Atlantic's depths for months at a time.
Trident submarines have a blue crew and a gold crew. One trains while the other is at sea. Both crews work together for about a month at a time to maintain the Tennessee between patrols.
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The crew's primary mission is nuclear deterrence. They share their 560-foot-long home with a nuclear-powered propulsion system, up to 24 Trident nuclear missiles and a load of torpedoes.
The Tennessee's secondary mission is to build proficiency in shooting torpedoes and to conduct surveillance and reconnaissance. Quiet and fast, the Trident submarine fleet is the largest and most powerful submarine force in the world.
Working beneath the waves for months at a time in tight quarters requires a special set of characteristics and so the Navy carefully chooses its submarine crews from volunteers. And while the challenge is certainly a part of what has kept calling Nilsen back to the sea, the bigger draw has been family.
No, Nilsen is not just trying to escape his children. He is married to the former Maria Huntzinger of Cross Lanes, West Virginia. They have two sons, Matthew and Michael, and a daughter, Rachel.
And while being away from his family on land is not easy, Nilsen says he can manage because the Tennessee crew is truly his family at sea and the families of his crew have become the extended family of his wife and children at home.
"We fix equipment during a refit period and then the other crew goes back out on patrol. The crew that just gave up the boat goes into a training cycle," Nilsen says.
The result is that it's not just the crews on the submarine working closely together. The families and crews of the U.S.S. Tennessee rely on each other and have formed a tight-knit community.
And once you are a part of that community, Nilsen says it is a very difficult thing to leave.
Content by perspective@engr.wisc.edu
Date last modified: Tuesday, 26-Apr-2005 17:06:42 CDT
Date created: 26-Apr-2005
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