College + commission p1 - Military Career Advancement - Military Times Edge

When Chris Piha left the Air Force to earn a commission through ROTC, he worried that returning to the classroom after four years as a flying crew chief on C-17s would be a bit of a culture shock. The bigger adjustment, it turned out, was going from active duty to ROTC.

“I went from a pretty high op-tempo mission — I was on the road quite a bit and doing medevac missions — to a training environment at a university. It was a lot different,” said Piha, who earned his first bar when he graduated from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale in December.

Almost 10,000 prior-service troops — veterans, reservists and active-duty — worked toward their commission in ROTC during the 2009-10 school year. Many of them entered through one of the special avenues for enlisted service members, such as the Army’s Green to Gold program; others separated and used their education benefits to pay for school. Of course, not all of them had the same culture shock as Piha — the day-to-day ROTC experience can vary significantly depending on the service, the school and the student.

Service distinctions

ROTC is typically a four-year program, though vets may be able to opt out of the first two years if they are not on scholarship.

Each service is a little different:

• In Army ROTC, cadets learn individual soldier skills in the first two years, then focus on tactical leadership in the third year to prepare for the Leadership Development and Assessment Course the summer before senior year.

• Air Force ROTC cadets take junior-level military science courses their first two years and attend a four-week summer field training unit before starting the Professional Officer Course in the third year.

• Navy ROTC includes a Navy option, a Marine option and Nurse Corps option, each with different academic requirements. Most NROTC members complete four- to six-week training cruises every summer.

Perspective — and paperwork

Veterans might find some of the material familiar — and they will certainly have a leg up over traditional ROTC students in certain areas, but they have plenty to learn, said Col. Michael Pyott, professor of military science at North Georgia College & State University.

“We try to teach our officers not only to think about the leadership that is required in the present but also to start thinking about the future,” he said.

Piha appreciated that change in perspective: “It’s just a different way of thinking, a different way of looking at things, a different way of analyzing situations.”

Students also learn an aspect of officership they don’t talk about in recruiting commercials: paperwork.

“How to do [operations] orders, how to brief, how to write award citations, how to do [noncommissioned officer evaluation reports] ... that’s what I’m learning, the administrative side, which is actually the biggest side,” said Gary Gorrell, an Army Ranger now at Texas A&M on a Green to Gold scholarship.

Schools options

Most ROTC students do physical training and wear their uniforms a couple of times a week; if that’s just not enough for you, you should consider a senior military college like North Georgia College, Texas A&M or Virginia Tech. Their ROTC students wear uniforms every day, do formations on a daily basis and follow rules concerning their appearance and personal life. It’s not your typical college experience, but the structure and familiarity appeal to some veterans.

Jack Augustin, who has deployed twice with the Army National Guard since starting at Virginia Tech, came to the school specifically for its Corps of Cadets. He likes its rigor and camaraderie, and thinks the training regimen is better than anything he’s seen at other ROTC programs. As for the rules — he doesn’t mind.

“If I’m going to do 20 years in the military, what’s another four years in college?” he said. “It’s just a precursor to what I’m going to encounter for the next 20 years.”

Not everyone is so philosophical: Gorrell, for one, is glad the Corps of Cadets at Texas A&M has relaxed some rules for prior-service students. Members of its veterans-only unit, Delta Company, are excused from six of the 10 weekly formations and don’t have to live in the dorms. And perhaps most importantly, “no 18-year-old is yelling at me, as a 25-year-old, and telling me how things work,” he said.

Understand the system

That potential for friction with younger or less-experienced students is there, Pyott acknowledged, but so is the potential for leadership.

“I talk to [veterans] about understanding their place in the Corps of Cadets,” he said. “It’s important that they act as a kind of mentor to their fellow cadets.”

Most vets in ROTC wear it well, said Capt. Adam Reeves, a military science instructor at Virginia Tech, who also earned his commission through Green to Gold. “They understand the system and the system understands them.”

Augustin soon found that his yearlong Afghanistan deployment earned him a certain deference from other cadets.

Piha struggled more, chafing under the supervision of younger cadets. He eventually took his frustrations to an instructor.

“We had a sit-down and he kind of enlightened me to the idea that this was a training environment. Pretty much what it boiled down to is: We would rather see mistakes being made in ROTC than in the active-duty Air Force,” he said.

If you do get frustrated, he said, “the No. 1 thing is to be patient. This isn’t active duty any more. You have to have an open mind.”