-Hi. I'm Rob Citino, the Senior Historian
here at the National WWII Museum
in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Standing in the museum
in our Road to Tokyo exhibit
which deals with the Pacific War,
and I'm standing next to
 my great friend, Volker Benkert,
a faculty member from
 Arizona State University.
Volker, welcome to New Orleans.
-Thank you very much.
We're here to introduce our
new joint master's online program.
This program marries
 two great institutions,
The National WWII Museum as well as
 the Arizona State University
to teach World War II in an online capacity
on the graduate level.
I think what's noble about this is
 we're standing here on this great museum
that tells the story of World War II
through an American experience
where history really comes to life.
This program will talk about
the history of World War II
in a comparative and global fashion.
We're taking the story as the core
and they're are bringing it into
a much more global perspective.
Our program will also include even a course
on contemporary relevance.
Well, we're not just thinking about the world
that was shaped by World War II,
but we're also thinking about
 long-lasting memory debates,
not just in the United States
but globally around this major conflict.
-I think that's great.
I'll also throw this in,  just as
we're going to try to be
 global here geographically,
we're going to try to have
the broadest possible approach.
Sure, we'll do some battle and war fighting.
That's always been my bread and butter
as a scholar and as a researcher
but we're also going to be looking
at politics, at society,
at diplomacy, at culture, at film.
We're not going to shrink from discussing
 the horrors of the Holocaust,
comparative genocides.
That too, is going to be part.
I'm pretty excited about this.
I also will second what you said
about the two institutions
that are kind of being married here.
It's a great educational institution, Arizona State,
and one of the leaders in online education.
Here at the museum,
we also bring some things to the table.
As you can see,
we're standing in a museum gallery.
Artifacts, mega artifacts,
 you name it,
we have it here including 10,000 testimonies,
oral histories from veterans.
I think of people might who want to take this.
 I can come up with a lot of groups.
I see this as kind of
 professional development.
You might be a high school teacher
 who would like to get a master's
and prefer
 professional development reasons.
You might just be somebody
who wants to keep those juices flowing
and study this largest of human conflicts
a little more carefully than you have.
-Absolutely. That's why the program
is designed to teach skills
where, of course, we're going to learn
a lot about World War II.
There's no doubt about that.
-That's for sure.
-We're also really interested in
transferable skills.
Analysis, critical thinking, writing,
and writing not just in the academic format
but vary on many, many different venues
as you will when you are a professional
working in the museum.
If you're a teacher, if you're a historian
in any kind of public organization,
you will have to have a repertoire
of different kinds of writing
and we try to teach that here.
-Great point. I'll throw in one last thing,
the flexibility of this program.
You're going to really do it at your own time.
It doesn't matter where you are on the globe.
This is World War II class and you can take it
literally from anywhere in the world.
-I hope that you will be very much
interested in the program.
You will definitely meet Rob and myself
and we're looking forward to
having you in class.
