Students and faculty pose for a group photo in front of the USS Constitution during the 72nd International Maritime Officer Course, Sept. 8, 2024, in Boston. (Bryan Myhr/U.S. Coast Guard)

Twenty-seven students from 23 countries are graduating from a 12-week course that imparts the U.S. Coast Guard’s know-how and fosters interoperability for future joint missions, according to a news release from the USCG Training Center in Yorktown, Va.

The 72nd International Maritime Officer Course, hosted by the USCG International Maritime Officer School in Yorktown, is intended for mid-grade officers or civilians with 7-10 years of experience.

The course is wide-ranging: it covers search and rescue, maritime law enforcement, international rule of law and armed conflict and port security, among other things.

“I got to learn incident command systems procedures. It would be nice if we start implementing them because it is really helpful to handle different situations and emergencies. Also, I got to learn how the U.S. Coast Guard does search and rescue,” said Lt. j.g. Pablo Gutierrez, an operations officer with the Colombian Navy.

Several students perform roles in a simulation lab as part of the 72nd International Maritime Officer Course, Sept. 5, 2024, in New London, Conn. (Bryan Myhr/U.S. Coast Guard)

Crucially, the course is also intended to help students learn more about the United States’ history, culture and norms of governance. Accordingly, enrollees visited major East Coast cities such as Boston and Washington, as well as the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.

A group of international maritime officers take a bus tour of historic sites as part of the 72nd International Maritime Officer Course, Sept. 3, 2024 in Philadelphia. (Bryan Myhr/U.S. Coast Guard)

“The U.S. Coast Guard is a global coast guard, but we are not the global coast guard,” said USCG International Training head Brian Lisko.

The International Maritime Officer School has hosted thousands of international students from over 100 naval and coast guard services since the 1960s, but the officers course, established in 1995, is the centerpiece of the USCG’s international training programs.

With the conclusion of the 72nd iteration of the officer’s course on Sept. 26, there will be 1,660 total graduates of the program globally — all helping to “enforce the international rules-based order of which all our like-minded nations are a part of,” as Lisko said.