How to accept/transfer an Army ROTC scholarship

Posted on April 3, 2018 by goldenknightbattalion

So I’ve been watching the discussion board churn over the last couple days.  The results of the last board were released and everybody is asking how to accept their offer, and how to transfer their offer. I see a lot of sketchy, misinformed advice being given.  When I see that it usually prompts me to think blog post. Lately, before I write anything I check the Additional information tab on the application website.  Cadet Command has done a fantastic job making that the go to place for good information.  Unfortunately for some reason most applicants (and their parents) haven’t figured out how to open that link and read the information.  Being the lazy blogger I am, I’ve pulled that information out from behind the curtain.  Here’s what the Additional Information tab has to say:

Accepting the Scholarship

Those applicants selected for an Army ROTC scholarship have tasks that must be completed in order to accept their scholarship. Please understand, the act of accepting your scholarship does not obligate you to join the ROTC program, it does not commit you to military service and it does not commit the US Army to pay the scholarship. The act of accepting your scholarship merely reserves you a place should you become fully qualified and choose to contract. This creates different decision points where you will be able to choose among options or change your mind.

After you are done with this section, please see the sections on Payment of Benefits and Becoming Fully Qualified.

  1. Once you have been notified and receive you scholarship offer letter, you will have to make your first decision. The scholarship offer letter will tell you what type of scholarship you have been selected for and to which schools the offer(s) have been made.
  1. Based on when you receive you scholarship offer, you will have other decisions to make:

– Scholarship Offers made in October/November. Cadet Command understands that most schools haven’t released even their early admissions decisions at this point. Select the school you would most like to attend where you received an offer. Do not wait to find out if you’ve been admitted before you accept your scholarship because Cadet Command will likely withdraw the scholarship offer and there is no guarantee it will be reinstated. If you later receive a negative admissions decisions to the school you selected, you can request to transfer your scholarship to a school where you have been accepted. The step for requesting a transfer are below.

– Scholarship Offers made in January/February. Many schools have released early decisions but regular round admission decisions haven’t been made for most. The intent is the same for offers made in October/November above. Select the school you would most like to attend where you received an offer. Don’t let the deadline pass waiting to see if you were accepted. Reserve your scholarship and request a transfer if necessary.

– Scholarship offers made in March/April. Most schools have released their regular round admissions decisions during this time of year with April 1st being the date for many. You should have a pretty good idea what your options for where you can go to college next year. You must still return your acceptance paperwork.

  1. Based on what school you received your scholarship offer, you will have other decisions to make:

– I got an offer to my primary school. This is easy, accept the scholarship to that school.

– I didn’t get an offer to the school where I’m going. You must still select one of the schools on your offer letter because this reserves the scholarship. You can still request to transfer your scholarship to that school. That doesn’t mean you write in the school you want to attend and send that back. See the instructions for requesting to transfer your scholarship below.

– I’ve not been accepted to that school yet. Based on the admissions decisions of a particular school, you may not know if you’ve been accepted yet – that’s OK. If it’s your first choice or the only offer you received, accept the scholarship to that school. If you later receive a negative admissions decisions to the school you selected, you can request to transfer your scholarship to a school where you have been accepted.

– I didn’t get into that school. If it’s the only school where you received an offer, accept the scholarship to that school and request a transfer.

– I didn’t apply to that school. As discussed in the instructions for picking schools, it is your responsibility to apply to all of the schools you list in the application. That being said, you obviously cannot use the scholarship at a school you’ve not applied to or been accepted to. You will need to request a transfer. The step for requesting a transfer are below.

– I was wait-listed for that school. You have a couple of options. If that is the school you are most interested in attending, accept the scholarship there and wait for your admissions decision. If you get in, no further action is required. If you don’t get in, request to transfer.

– National Decision Day. May 1 is known to some as National College Decision Day, as it is often the deadline for students to make deposits to attend the college of their choice. Cadet Command will make every effort to ensure transfer decisions and scholarship offers have been made by this date. It is still your responsibility to do whatever is required by the college/university to reserve you place at that school.

  1. The letter you receive likely indicated you are not considered medically or administratively qualified yet. Please see the section on DoDMERB Medical Examinations and Becoming Fully Qualified. They will better explain what that means and what the next steps include.

Here’s the information regarding a transfer.  Read carefully, because it says exactly what I have always said.  File upload is your best bet.  Accept one of your offers, write a statement regarding why you want to transfer, and include your letter of acceptance to the school you want to transfer to. Scan and upload.

Requesting to transfer your scholarship

Please understand, while Cadet Command always tries to accommodate where you want to go to school and what you want to study, there is no guarantee your transfer will be approved.

  1. There are many reasons why a transfer may not be approved

– There are a finite number of allocations at each host program. When that program fills up, your transfer will likely be disapproved. The number of allocations by program can change from year-to-year and are based on many factors which may include: classroom size can only accommodates a certain number; mission requirements at that program; and the number of Cadre at that program. Typically, larger universities have more allocations but that’s not always true. Contact the host program Cadre for more information.

– The combination of college major and school aren’t always conducive to the ROTC training requirements. Contact the host program Cadre for more information but this usually only applies to nurses.

– Just because an ROTC Cadre member at a college says the transfer should be approved, doesn’t always mean it will. This also does not guarantee the transfer will be approved.

  1. To request a transfer, you must first accept your scholarship to one of the schools where you were originally offered. If you have already done that, submit the following documentation:

– Brief statement indicating why you want to transfer. There is not set format but please make it legible and do not write it directly on your scholarship acceptance form.

– Copy of your university acceptance letter.

– You can submit a request to transfer at the same time you accept your scholarship. Submit both sets of documents at the same time.

  1. Cadet Command accepts paperwork the same for pretty much any document you may need to send us. Pick one of them; NOT all of them. The most preferred and fastest are listed in order below:

– Upload the files individually to your File Upload tab of the application.  This is by far the fastest and easiest. If you don’t have easy access to a scanner, you can always take a picture of the form with a smart phone and upload that. Just make sure you can read it.

– Email the file to your processor directly or use the central email address. USARMY.KNOX.USACC.MBX.TRAIN2LEAD@MAIL.MIL   From there, your processor will upload the document to your File Upload tab just like how you do the same thing.

– US Postal Service or one of the commercial vendors are the least preferred because they are the slowest and require additional handling. Plus, there’s no sense in spending money when you don’t have to. From there, your processor will scan the document and then upload it to your File Upload tab.

– Only using the first method is there a reliable manner to track if Cadet Command has processed your paperwork from start to finish.

– When you upload your acceptance paperwork to the File Upload tab, the document type is “Letter of Intent and Acknowledgement.”

Have you processed my paperwork?

Once you have been awarded an Army ROTC scholarship, the most important tab in your application becomes the Selection Status tab. It can answer whether or not we have received and processed your paperwork. Here’s how:

Scholarship Acceptance

– When you submit you acceptance paperwork using the File Upload tab, there will be a yellow flag next to the Name of Document (the type of document not the actual name you gave it) and the status will indicate “Pending” in the Approved column. Once we have received your document, the status will change to “Approved.” This doesn’t mean the action you requested was approved, it only indicates the document was received, it is legible, and we understand your intent for submitting the document.

– To see if it has been processed and approved, go to the Selection Status tab. When you received your initial scholarship offer, the Selection Status tab indicated which school(s), what type of scholarship, and the acceptance status. Your scholarship status will remain as “Pending Acceptance” until Cadet Command receives and processes your acceptance paperwork. Once Cadet Command has received and processed your acceptance paperwork, the status of your selected offer will change from “Pending Acceptance” to “Offer Accepted.”  Any other school(s) you were offered will be removed from the page.

Transfer Requests

– Submit your paperwork as discussed above. The File Upload tab is the most expedient method. The approved status you see next to the document type does not indicate the request to transfer was approved, only the document was received and we are working your request.

– The Selection Status indicate the originally accepted school until we have processed and approved the transfer. Once approved, theSelection Status tab will indicate your offer has been accepted to the new school. The old school will disappear from the list.

– Some requests take longer to process depending on where you are requesting to transfer.

Hope that helps.  The sooner you make up your mind and take action, the sooner Cadet Command can make their decision and you can start planning for the Fall semester.

 

Congrats on getting that scholarship offer!!

 

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The interview 2017 edition

Posted on December 29, 2017 by goldenknightbattalion

This is an update on information I wrote about here and here

The interview

At Clarkson we like to spend some time with our interviewees. We invite them to visit our lab or tour our campus while they are here

One of the 4 requirements to get your file board ready after you start your application for the 4 year Army ROTC Scholarship is to conduct an interview with a Professor of Military Science (PMS). It is usually one of the last tasks an applicant will accomplish, because it usually involves traveling to meet with a PMS or his/her representative to conduct a face to face interview. The interview is one of the most important steps in the process because not only is it worth 200 of the points in your whole person score it is also one of the most important pieces of information the board will use to score you, if it is done right.

Here is what Cadet Command has to say about the interview, right from the additional information tab on the applications website.  If you aren’t familiar with that tab, you should be:

PMS Scholarship Interviews

 Administrative

The purpose of the Interview is for the Professor of Military Science (PMS) to have a face-to-face evaluation of the applicant.  The interview is conducted by an active PMS who will ask you questions and will answer any questions you may have about Army ROTC and the pursuit of an Army commission.

You won’t be eligible to conduct your interview until you have provided qualifying SAT/ACT scores and a copy of your high school transcript. Once you have done that, you will receive a message through the application identifying the five closest ROTC host programs to your home address. You don’t have to use these five schools but the interview needs to be conducted face-to-face.

The interview can be telephonic as a last resort, depending on distances involved. This doesn’t mean you can do a telephonic interview if you live near Washington, D.C. but want to go to school in California. Where you want to go to school doesn’t matter to the PMS conducting the interview.

Any cost incurred for transportation, food and lodging for the interview are your responsibility.

Overseas applicants must contact a stateside Professor of Military Science to arrange a virtual meeting via Skype or other similar services to conduct the interview.

 Tips

  1. Be prepared. This doesn’t mean practicing your scripted responses to standard questions; expect a good interviewer to maneuver around those types of questions. You should still be able to speak intelligibly about standard questions such as ‘tell us about yourself.’

Review your application packet again and bring along extra copies of your resume, as well. Be sure to write down a few questions for the interviewer or panel, too. The typical interview can last anywhere from 10 to 60 minutes.

  1. No flip-flops. While you may wear board shorts and a tank top to the beach or school, this is not the appropriate time to dress down. You need to demonstrate to the interviewer that you are a serious. No one expects you to go buy a business suit or fancy dress but you should take it serious. More appropriate attire includes items such as slacks and a buttoned-down collared shirt, or a knee-length skirt or a JROTC uniform. Hair should be neat and out of your face, and don’t forget to wear shoes that are in good condition.
  1. Be on time. Give yourself plenty of extra time to deal with unexpected situations, such as traffic or parking issues, to ensure you do not arrive late. You should also jot down the name of your interviewer and ask for him/her by name when you arrive. Nothing screams “unprepared” like showing up for a meeting and not remembering who you are supposed to meet. If you are running behind, please call ahead and let them know you will be late. This will give the interviewer the option of pushing back your interview or rescheduling it, if necessary. It’s never good to show up late, but it’s even worse to do so without giving fair warning.
  1. Listen, Think, Speak. It’s important to listen during your interview and not anticipate questions. Once a question has been asked, respond in a clear and concise manner. Stay on topic, don’t try to steer the question back to a practiced answer, and don’t ramble. Make eye contact and enunciate! Above all else, answer all questions honestly. Interviewers can tell when you are embellishing or making up answers to impress them.
  1. Be yourself. If selected for the scholarship, that’s what you’ll give every day anyway. Walk into your interview with confidence, smile, and be yourself. Most interviewers will keep a stoic face. Don’t let this influence your responses or behavior during the interview. Always conduct yourself professionally and as though you are the best applicant.

Here is my advice

Where should I interview?

Conduct your interview at a school you are interested in, and preferably one that is listed on your application. If it is just not feasible to get to one of the schools on your list do it at one of the schools close to your home, but be aware that the interviewer has less invested in you if you don’t plan to attend their school, and you will probably spend some of that visit hearing about the school and program you are interviewing at. If you interview at a school that is likely to be your destination that interviewer will go the extra mile to make sure you have a successful interview. Additionally if you don’t receive a scholarship offer you will still be on that PMS’s radar, and may be considered for any campus based scholarships that become available.

What will they be looking for?

Here is the checklist that the PMS will use when she/he conducts the interview. The PMS is looking at your Scholar/Athlete/Leader attributes and is awarding points based on what you tell them. Obviously you won’t be lying to pad your points, but make sure you account for all your accomplishments, and make sure you get credit. If you are short in one of the SAL areas, make sure on the back of the form the PMS can give you extra points for something else. For example, you’ve never played team sports because you have had to have a part time job throughout high school to help the family make ends meet. You won’t get points for athlete, but on the back the PMS can annotate your circumstances and give you full points for personal qualities and potential.  This is your opportunity to tell your story and make your case.

What should I wear to the interview?

Use your common sense. Suit and tie is not normally required. Collared shirt, Khakis, and nice shoes will work. It might be good to ask the person that arranges the interview what to wear. We have conducted interviews in the field before, so a suit and tie would have been inappropriate. We have also had JROTC cadets wear their uniform to the interview (nice touch, but not necessary). Just don’t show up in ripped jeans and a grubby tshirt, and you’ll be fine.

Should you bring a resume?

Again, a nice touch but not necessary. You should have submitted all the information that we need prior to the interview. I have had applicants bring resumes, transcripts, letters of recommendation, and scrap books complete with gym club card and handgun licence. Don’t need all that stuff. Again, ask because some schools might want to see a resume.

What type of questions will be asked?

Depends on the PMS. Some PMS’s may be more formal than others. Some may want to have a discussion and answer your questions. Some may want to hear what is motivating you. Some may get off on a tangent and talk about something you both have in common. You should have a short concise answer prepared to the question “tell me a bit about yourself” and you should be able to explain why you want to be an Army Officer. Take a look at this post for some ideas regarding themes you can talk about such as Army Values or Soldiers Creed. Remember that no matter how informal the conversation appears to be, you are still being watched and evaluated. If you call him dude, and spent 20 minutes discussing the best band at this year’s Warped Tour you may think you hit it out of the park, and the PMS may be checking the “no scholarship for this guy” block.

Who and where

There is some debate among my peers whether the PMS or ROO (or someone else) should conduct the interview.  My belief is that it’s called a PMS interview for a reason, and every after action review of a scholarship board I have ever seen said that the board favors a PMS interview over interviews done by surrogates like ROOs or Executive Officers.  My advice is to be wary if you are told you will be interviewed by someone other than the PMS.  Also be aware that if you are interviewing at a popular school in a densely populated area you will probably get a little different result and attitude from your interviewer than if you travel to a small, remote school (like Clarkson University) and interview with a PMS who only does a handful of interviews each year.  I would also caution about doing an interview at an Senior Military College.  Even if you think you want to attend an SMC, interviewing at an SMC is going to put you into a different pool of applicants, and your interviewer may have a different perception of what is the best candidate for a scholarship.  I’m not saying don’t interview at a popular school or an SMC.  Just be aware that the results of your interview may be effected by those environments.

Remember your manners

Yes sir, No sir or Yes Ma’am, No Ma’am will definitely score some points. Yeah, bro, and dude will loose you some points. It is also a good idea to drop the PMS a note or email after the interview thanking them for their time.

That’s my updated take on the interview. Hope it helps. Make sure you drop us a comment and let us know how it goes.

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Not a CULP trip – 2017 – Guatemala – Cadet Lieber

Posted on November 13, 2017 by goldenknightbattalion

This one is kind of a long one, but it’s a good one.  So not every Cadet gets to do some cool Army training each summer.  Until a Cadet is contracted they aren’t eligible for things like CULP and Air Assault school.  Cadet Lieber is a three year scholarship winner, so the Summer after his freshman year he still wasn’t contracted.  Along with helping me, as a junior counselor at New York Boy’s State he also did some incredible work in Central America. Here’s his story about his adventure.

Climbing up a steep winding mountain trail, we took turns carrying a wheel chair and getting sips of water to keep us going in the heat of the Guatemalan jungle. As we came out over a vista between the dense walls of vegetation I looked out over the ever expanding green oasis that ebbed and flowed beneath us. I started thinking about how the family we were going to see got to be in the midst of this every single day. Then my thoughts shifted to the mother carrying her son on her back up this trail with his spastic flailing that was surprisingly strong. We kept pushing up until we reached their small home on the top of the mountain. It was a very rugged combination of concrete, tin roofing and whatever scraps were lying around. As we stepped on the porch, there was Carlitos and his mother waiting for us to arrive.

Lieber 1

Darlene, the first patient to receive a made in Guatemala stander, was not expected to be able to stand or walk. Two years after beginning using our stander this is her standing next to her now unnecessary standing frame with her mother and part of our 2017 team.

Rewind a few months and I was a 17 year old high school student who hadn’t been out the U.S. before and certainly didn’t know anything about treating cerebral palsy(CP). One day my engineering teacher gave me a number and told me to call it so I did and Scott Mitchell was on the other end. Scott was a biomedical engineering student at Dartmouth University and had designed something that was about to change thousands of lives. He had designed a pediatric standing frame for a school project aimed towards providing physical therapy to children with debilitating diseases. The primary one in mind was CP, which affects 1 out of every 1,000 kids globally to the point where they are unable to walk or control most of their muscle functions. In developed countries there are lots of amenities and safety nets that help to not only prevent CP, but also treat it when it occurs. Standing frames are the most common physical therapy treatment for CP. These “standers” as we call them are devices that provide support to the patient by some arrangement of straps and a frame that allow the child to stand upright and bear their own weight, a near impossible task for many patients. As simple as this may sound a stander on the market today can cost in the range of $8,000 not to mention the cost of a session with physical therapists that you should have multiple times a week. If a part on one of these standers breaks, they could be rendered useless or at least dangerous until it’s replaced, which could quite well be never in many rural developing countries. Scott’s design had all of this in mind. Our stander was made from universally available hardware store materials, is extremely simple to use and repair and costs only $50 to produce.

Lieber 2

Our 2015 teams visits a patient in their home in rural Guatemala.

In the summer of 2015 I joined Scott on his approximately two month maiden voyage of the non-profit organization called Stand With Me, now the official name of our group aimed at getting these standers out in the world. Our mission was to travel through Central and South America to check on patients who had received standers already and establish a shop that could produce them in country and get them where they needed to go. When we arrived in Xenacoj, Guatemala we stayed in a small compound next to where our shop was to be established. We were piggy backing of Hope Haven and using part of their facility where they had an established shop similar to ours building wheel chairs. I worked with most of the workers there to make the various jigs and parts that were needed to streamline the construction of our standers and it was an incredible experience to get to work with people who were so different from me. I loved talking to them about their different cultures and learning Spanish in a massive trial by fire brought plenty of laughs. Many of them are in wheel chairs themselves and they took no mercy on the gringos during the lunch break wheel chair basketball games. Within a week or two we had what was a mostly finalized shop other than the changes that would come as we refined the process. The worker that we were hiring to be in our shop once we left was named Kevin and we taught him all that we could about our standing frames and how to make him so by the time we finished the shop our first few standing frames had already been made as practice.

The next phase was to get out and check on our patients who had already received standing frames when they were sent down. This is when the trip really began to get personal. No longer was this just another wood working project, we were seeing the faces and hearing the words of the people we were helping. For many of them we traveled hours by car and walked down trails to find their homes situated in their own corner of the world. We were living out of our van for a couple weeks to see as many as we could. Sometimes all their home would be is a series of wood posts or branches supporting a corrugated roof with cloth dividers for rooms and when we walked in the first thing every family did was offer us a drink or meal. This was more than humbling. If these people had nothing, they would still offer it to us because that’s the way their culture is. I learned a lot in every sense of the word by visiting our patients.

Lieber 3

Part of our 2017 team pulling a late night to test design improvements on our standing frame.

One of our patients, Edison, and his family were Mayan and not only did they speak a Mayan dialect rather than Spanish, but they had a totally separate frame of mind than us. They believed that Edison’s ailments were due to witchcraft gone wrong and that prayers and more witchcraft were the only ways to make him better. This was a first for me. I knew these cultures still existed, but interacting with them was unchartered territory for me. After speaking with them for a while they agreed to try our stander since their methods hadn’t been working. We saw a handful more families many of whom praised us as angels who saved them and their child because since using our stander their child started to be able to feed themselves or focus on an object or even walk a little with their mom’s support. I didn’t think I could be anyone’s hero at 17 years old and I still didn’t really feel like I was, but what we were doing was making a world of difference in the lives of our patients and there families.

This past summer I returned to Guatemala and got to see the entire process after two years of functioning. The standers had changed some, the construction process and distribution was being revised and most importantly many of our patients were getting better. We now have over 600 standing frames with patients in 8 countries on 4 continents and have plans to put a shop and distribution center in the western hemisphere in the near future to increase our production. Getting to take part in this was not only emotionally fulfilling, but I was able to learn a lot that I can apply to my role as an army officer. Starting an organization where our primary area of operation is in a foreign country speaking a foreign language and our responsibility includes organizing efforts on the other side of the world taught me a lot about organizational leadership. We spent a lot of time planning and then during our trip changes had to be made and accounted for constantly due to things like cultural differences, different resources being available in U.S. that weren’t there and timing of different phases. Getting this opportunity to go into a real world situation and make a difference from the time that I was 17 to now and knowing that what I and the rest of this team did is going to have impacts on people’s live years from now is extremely fulfilling. I proved to myself that I am capable of creating change and doing good and I think that is going to carry over into not only my Army career, but the rest of my life.

For more info on Stand With Me and our efforts check out www.Standwithme.org!

We expect Cadet Lieber to have more amazing stories after this summer…stay tuned.

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CULP Trip – 2017 – Tanzania – Cadet Settineri

Posted on September 15, 2017 by goldenknightbattalion

I thought I’d finish out the week with another CULP post.  We had two Cadets journey to Tanzania this Summer.  Here is the second report from the African country.

It all started at Fort Knox, the place of all beginnings I suppose. There I became acquainted with the team I would be working with for the next three weeks, and we were briefed for three days about the country we were going to. On July 17th we left for Tanzania with nine cadets, and on August 7th we came back to Louisville Kentucky with nine cadets (although there were a few slight illnesses along the way).

Jitegemee Students

Jitegemee Students pose for a picture with me after an instruction period

The purpose of our mission was to interact with the people of Tanzania and to build rapport with them. We wanted to give them a feel of what America was like, how our culture worked, and to answer any questions they had. We were there to teach, but also to learn as much as we could from them, and their culture.

My team had nine people on it and we all worked together to succeed in our goal. Our main area of work was at a secondary school in one of the biggest cities in Tanzania, Dar es Salaam. Dar es Salaam was an absolutely massive establishment with over five million people in it. While the population may have been indicative of a massive city, it was more sprawling than anything with only a few tall buildings that could not have even been called skyscrapers.

The city was bustling all of the time. Since there is no penalty against soliciting on the side of the roads, there was always someone trying to sell something. Roadside salesman sold things as simple as oranges and newspapers, to computers and cellphones. Bumpy, and in some places gaping, roads were surrounded by dusty footpaths which were heavily traversed by the average man who would rather waive the bus fee or a take a bike to work (which in some cases might be faster). While the government may have bypassed attention to the road system they had a large public transportation system that was composed mainly of buses, which often packed the road.

The trip to Jitegemee Secondary school in the morning was about ten miles, but could take anywhere from an hour, to an hour and a half to get there. Traffic was bad, but it was a great time to gaze out the window and take everything in. Jitegemee is one of the best schools in the nation and has about 2000 students, all of which are highly challenged, and very intelligent. The school is mainly for families of the military, so military life was integrated into the school life.

my favorite teacher Mr. Yanga

On our last day at the school, I got to have a picture taken with my favorite teacher Mr. Yanga. We had many discussions about the world during our daily 10:30 tea time.

About 50% of the teachers were former or current military members. The headmaster was a captain in the Tanzanian Peoples Defense Force, and there were about 100 cadets running about the school keeping order. The school was similar to an American high school. Many of the students boarded at the school, and the ones I talked to liked it, they had a sense of order and discipline in their lives. The grade setup is also different. There are O level and A level courses, each with different forms or grades. O level (ordinary level) was constituted of forms 1-4, and A level (advanced level) courses were offered in forms 4-6. Students ranged anywhere from fifteen to twenty-five years of age.

We were not told much about what we were doing at the school and the first day we were given a classroom full of kids, and instructed to teach them. Split into groups of three cadets, the task was not as daunting as it could have been but it was still difficult. The students did speak English, but it was limited in forms 1-4, so we had to break a culture and language barrier in order to teach them. Many icebreakers, jokes, and us dancing or singing usually did the trick to ease students. Once the students were warmed up they began to ask questions about America that they were curious about.

The most common questions were: “Will I get shot in America since I am black?”, “What are the differences between Tanzania and America that you see?”, “Do you have a wife?”, “How can I get to America?” and “Are you afraid of North Korea?”. It seemed once I answered one question, ten more would pop up. Of course we had questions for them too which they were equally excited to answer. I became quick friends with many of the students and this continued for the three weeks we worked at the school.

Mikumi National park

Lt. Rausch, our team leader, waves from the land cruiser. On one of our weekend trips we went to Mikumi National park. The early morning sunrise is depicted here

Our main place of work was at the school, but we took a few excursions to see the country. Our biggest one was a trip to Mikumi National Park. We drove all over the national park and saw many types of animals. A nine-hour drive to go the 200 miles to Mikumi really demonstrated the weak infrastructure and poor roads of the country. In addition to the big weekend trip, we also took afternoon trips nearly every day after we were done teaching to learn more about the city. These afternoon trips included visits to the University of Dar es Salaam, various markets, talking to native tribesmen, and various cultural presentations.

ten to seventy students

Classes ranged anywhere from ten to seventy students. I got one of the bigger classes this day

While we were not fully immersed into the Tanzanian culture, we experienced a lot of it over the twenty-two days we were in country. I learned the most about the Tanzanian education system, how it works, the quality of its students, and the style in which they are taught. I learned to challenge my assumptions, and ditch the stereotypes I came into the country with. Lastly I will never forget the kindness of the Tanzanian people, and their welcoming nature.

Great rundown of a once in a lifetime opportunity.  Always love hearing about the adventures our Cadets have on their CULP trips.

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Change to deadlines

Posted on September 11, 2017 by goldenknightbattalion

Just a quick blog post today.  Due to the unsettled weather in the south (huricanes) the deadline for submission for the first board has changed and the board date was pushed back.  I have updated my previous post about this years dates and I am sharing the info right off the application website.

To apply for the ROTC Scholarship, an application must be started by 04 February 2018 @ 1159pm EST.

If you have started an application by 04 February 2018, you have until 04 March 2018 @ 1159pm EST to complete your application.

To appear before a Selection Board to be considered for a scholarship, applicants must submit a completed
application, including the PMS interview, by 1159pm EST on one of the below “Document Submission Deadlines.”

Document Submission Deadlines

1st High School Board:
1 October 2017

2nd High School Board:
07 January 2018

3rd High School Board:
04 March 2018

Selection Board Convene Dates

1st High School Board:
16-20 October 2017

2nd High School Board:
22-26 January 2018

3rd High School Board:
19-23 March 2018

NOTE: Applicants who were previously boarded but not selected to receive a scholarship, can continue to submit documents to increase their chance for selection.
However, all application updates must be SUBMITTED no later than 04 March 2018@ 1159pm EST to be considered for a scholarship during the final board that convenes on 19-23 March 2018.

You have a little breathing room, but trust me…these deadlines sneak up on you and if you are like most applicants you lead a busy life.

 

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CULP Trip – 2017 – Nepal – Cadet Williams

Posted on August 30, 2017 by goldenknightbattalion

This is the trip report I was really looking forward to.  Nepal is on my life list and I was really interested to hear how things went for him.  Was glad to get lots of pictures and a video to round out his trip report.

IMG_3579            This summer I spent three weeks in Nepal as part of the ROTC Cultural Understanding and Language Proficiency program. For those who don’t know, Nepal is a small landlocked country in between China and India, which means it has a lot of strategic significance. Just two years ago Nepal was devastated by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake, so I was excited and concerned to see the poorest Asian country after two years of reconstruction.

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We arrived in Nepal after a 20-hour flight where we stayed in the Yak and Yeti Hotel, which is a 5-star luxury hotel in downtown Kathmandu. We spent the first weekend getting acclimated to the climate, culture, and the extreme differences in driving before traveling four hours to our work site Monday morning. The first week we spent doing humanitarian work at a school in the Nuwakot district. We were responsible for moving the rubble and tearing down the remaining stone walls to help them rebuild a newer and more stable schoolroom. After a week of manual labor in the extreme humidity and heat we were ready to return to Kathmandu.

 

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Our next week was focused on military training where we visited a military hospital, their military academy, their ranger school, and airborne school. We received tours by our local national officer at each training site, learned aikido with the Nepal rangers and had early morning PT with their cadets. We met a few different generals and top officials from their armed national police force as well.

IMG_3779            Our last week was our culture week where we acted as tourists seeing the different temples and historical sites in Kathmandu. We saw Hindu and Buddhist temples, ancient palaces, and spent a day on an eight-mile hike. It was a great way to end our trip and experience every aspect of the Kathmandu valley. I learned so much about Nepali history and culture and met a great group of cadets and Nepali people who I will never forget. I hope to one-day return and see the parts of Nepal I did not get to experience. CULP is a great experience and I highly recommend it to anyone considering applying for it.

 

Thanks to Cadet Williams for a great report. Nepal is definitely still on my life list.

 

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CULP trip – 2017 – Tanzania – Cadet Temme

Posted on August 26, 2017 by goldenknightbattalion

Time for me to start cleaning out my inbox of all the Summer training reports.  This year we had a bunch of Cadets on CULP trips, Army internships, and other summer training.  I always love sharing these each year because it highlights the incredible things our Cadets do, and it highlights what we emphasize here at Clarkson University and the Golden Knight Battalion.

We’ll start out this year’s reports with the newly married Cadet Battalion Commander Kerri Temme, formerly known as Cadet Boyer.  Her trip demonstrates that you should always expect changes in the Army and you should never let a change get you down, because it often leads to an unexpected win.

In December 2016, I was notified that I was awarded the opportunity to embark on a Cultural Understanding and Language Proficiency (CULP) mission to Cambodia. I have never been to Asia before but had read a lot about the region and was ecstatic for the mission. When our mission was changed in February to Tanzania, I was not as thrilled for I had just been to Africa the summer before and thought I knew all I needed to know about their culture. However, when I started the homework and began researching Tanzania more and more, I realized that the culture and structure of Tanzania was completely different from my prior experience. For instances, instead of the nation being broken into tribes, the government combined all the tribes in Tanzania and united them under one flag and enforced one language, Swahili. I expected to work solely with their military and learn only about their military and the structure of their government. My reality was different.

temme3            Upon arriving to CULP, we learned that our mission was to teach English at a local private school, Jetegemee, for young children whose parents either served in the military or were government officials. We began to plan fun games and English lessons that would suite this age group. When we arrived, we realized that we were extremely under prepared and all of our prior assumptions had been wrong. We walked into a class of 19-20 year olds learning advanced chemistry and courses of the same difficulty who spoke proper English. We quickly had to adjust our lessons and began to compare our two cultures. Talking to students around the same age as us and comparing the United States to Tanzania was the most beneficial part of our mission to understand their culture. We compared politics, gender roles, government structures, military structures, foreign trade partners, imported good and exported goods, music, food, sports, the list goes on. We sat in on some of their classes and realized that some of their high school equivalent courses were the same as our college courses and they were taught in Swahili and English. At that point, realizing that we may not have anything we can teach them to maintain the professor’s lesson plan, we divided into groups consisting of cadets with similar majors and sat in on classes that resembled our majors to assist the professors. Toward the end of our mission, the United States Charge d’Affaires, Inmi Patterson, came to visit the school. We saw her interact with the head of education at Jetegemee and the professors and learned about her role as a representative of the United States. Jetegemee greeted her with a song and a dance, representing their culture and how they welcome others.

temme2            Outside of the classroom, we experienced the Tanzanian culture through markets, museums, food, a safari, visiting a deserted island, visiting Dar Es Salaam University, and had presentations on Ramadhan and the Massai Tribe. This is where I learned the most. We met locals and experienced their everyday life from working at their markets where they made everything inside, to learning about the library and the pride behind it at the university. We observed how people would wake up early and start selling their goods on the side of the street as traffic accumulated or how fisherman would leave on their boats at dawn and return only once they have caught enough fish for the day. We’d observe locals that have great pride in their nation and sweep the streets to keep it clean and they would describe success as a collective effort, not an individual effort.

As a leader in a time of war, we will be deploying. Experiencing a nation that is not as well off as the United States is a major culture shock and can be very difficult to adjust to. Being able to have those experiences prior to those deployments are extremely beneficial to not only the mission but to the soldiers we will lead as well. A leader in culture shock will is unable to perform his or her job to the best of their ability and will be struggling to adjust; a leader who knows and understands different cultures will easily be able to adapt to lead their troops in a diverse situation. Leaders need to be able to have empathy and the interpersonal tact to connect with leaders from foreign nations while being able to influence them. We need to be able to walk into a room full of people that may not speak the same language as us and still have a command presence; CULP gave us that opportunity to practice and experience to adapt to it. Tanzania CULP mission 2017           The Cultural Understanding and Language Proficiency is by far one of the most rewarding and humbling opportunities ROTC has to offer. Being able to confidently walk into a room with fifty to sixty people of a different culture and start up a conversation is not something that I was comfortable with doing at all prior to the Tanzania mission. Toward the last week of the mission, I was extremely comfortable in doing so while greeitng them in a different language (Swahili). My first days walking around the markets or driving down the streets I was nervous and a little uneasy, but toward the end I was comfortable and it felt normal to drive to school and walk around. Having someone hold my hand after a hand shake or put their arm around me was not something I liked during the first week, but at the end I was holding hands and putting my arm around someone I was talking to. Once I understood the differences between their norms, values and culture, it was easy to embrace the Tanzanian culture and find things in common to talk about. Having not gone on a CULP mission, I would find it very hard to embrace and understand other cultures especially if I was deploying. Now that I understand how different cultures can be and how to find the common ground between two cultures, I can confidently lead my future troops into an unknown area with the experience and knowledge I collected on my CULP mission to Tanzania.

 

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