For two years, 1st Lt. Savanna Clendining G’22 has risen early in the morning to attend her online classes for the Newhouse School of Public Communication’s master’s program while stationed in Vincenza, Italy, serving the 173rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Airborne). She has attended class on a mountainside in Slovenia and from a cliff in the Dolomite Mountains in northern Italy. Doing coursework by flashlight inside of a darkened tent hasn’t stopped Clendining from working toward her graduate degree, and neither has the coronavirus.
In 2013, Clendining enrolled at Le Moyne College and majored in communications. In her sophomore year, she participated in Le Moyne College’s partnership with Syracuse University and became an Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) cadet. “Based on my experience, I think Syracuse University has one of the best ROTC programs in the country,” Clendining says. “The skills that I learned in the Stalwart Battalion at Syracuse University set me up for success.”
She now serves as a medical operations officer in Italy, and her experience in the medical field has mostly been learned on the job. So far, no one in the 173rd has tested positive for COVID-19. “We’ve tested over 50 people and all of those tests have come back negative, which is incredible because we’re in the middle of where the infection rate is pretty bad,” Clendining says.