thedrifter
05-02-06, 12:12 PM
May 08, 2006
Competition stiffens for resident programs
By John Hoellwarth
Times staff writer
Majors can no longer volunteer for the resident program at the Corps’ Command and Staff College, or any of the other services’ intermediate-level schools either.
Now, it’s all about the fitrep.
More specifically, majors who wish to attend these schools next year have until May 31 — the end of the current reporting period — to get their bosses to write an evaluation that includes a recommendation for admittance.
Students attending the schools — Command and Staff College at Quantico, Va.; the Naval War College at Newport, R.I.; Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.; or the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala. — in the 2007-2008 academic year will now be selected by a board.
That’s how officers were selected before the Corps made the resident course a voluntary assignment in 1999, said Maj. Tim Bryant, assignments monitor for majors with combat service support specialties.
Bryant said officials are making the change in order to populate the resident course with a more even mix of officers from the various communities that make up the Marine air-ground task force.
It also means tighter competition to get into those seats, since officers who want to go will now be competing with those who haven’t asked.
Lt. Col. Emily Elder, head of plans and programs for officer assignments, said it is desirable to have educated officers across the MAGTF to improve the effectiveness of the overall organization.
“With a voluntary process, there are no guarantees what mix of students will show up for any given academic year,” Elder said. “As has been noticed since the Marine Corps adopted a voluntary process, some [military occupational specialties] are underrepresented or not represented at all.”
Picking the right officers for the resident course directly influences each class’s capacity for sharing “experiences, challenges, techniques and procedures and by questioning how doctrine, new equipment and tactics will affect their MOS community,” she said.
This year’s graduating class at Command and Staff College includes 40 aviation officers, 31 combat service support officers and 27 ground-pounders, 18 of whom are infantry officers specifically, according to the school’s personnel records.
Some highly populated communities, such as military police and motor transportation, have no officers in the graduating class, according to the records.
‘The box of books’
All majors are required to go through the course in order to be eligible for promotion, but most never attend classes on campus, opting instead to complete the nonresident correspondence course that some have nicknamed “the box of books.”
Although the Command and Staff College offers an optional master’s degree in military studies to its resident students, Bryant said some majors would simply rather stay in the fleet than go back to college.
The stated objective of the Corps’ college is to “produce skilled war fighters who are proficient planners.” Its curriculum includes lessons in war fighting from the sea, operational art, culture and interagency operations and Arabic language, according to the school’s Web site.
Promotion boards don’t care whether a major completes the required course in person or from a distance. They concern themselves only with whether the course was completed, Bryant said.
Marines who are not selected by the board for the resident course will have to complete their required education as a nonresident student to stay competitive for promotion.
Bryant said selection for a resident course will depend on “performance, performance, performance,” meaning the board will base its selections primarily on the fitness reports of eligible Marines.
The only way for a major to stand out as someone who genuinely wants to attend the resident course is to plant a bug in the ear of the senior officers who write their fitness reports, Bryant said.
He said the board will convene in late November, run through December and take into account all fitness reports written through the end of this year’s annual reporting requirement period for majors, which will be over by June.
Roughly 160 students will be selected from the pool of majors who rate permanent change of station or assignment orders. The field then will be winnowed, reducing it to those who have not been passed over for promotion to lieutenant colonel and have not previously been a resident student at the course. But even with the field narrowed, competition for the school seats will be fierce.
Command and Staff College will graduate 98 Marines on June 7, a number Bryant said represents between 53 and 62 percent of those who applied for the resident course. In this regard, he said, getting into a resident program is already tough.
But school seats have not increased, and the board will be considering a greater number of Marines than those who typically volunteer. Bryant said it’s too early to tell how many Marines will be looked at by the board each year — the number of eligible majors will be determined by the deployment cycle and promotions between then and now — but he estimated that the board will review around 300 majors from the combat service support MOSs alone, with hundreds more presumably coming from the ground and aviation communities.
“So numbers-wise, it will be more competitive,” Bryant said.
Majors who have completed their required professional military education through nonresident courses at local educational assistance offices remain eligible for the resident course, but that may change with the publication of a Corps-wide message due out at the end of the summer that will further clarify how the board will be conducted, Bryant said.
Ellie
Competition stiffens for resident programs
By John Hoellwarth
Times staff writer
Majors can no longer volunteer for the resident program at the Corps’ Command and Staff College, or any of the other services’ intermediate-level schools either.
Now, it’s all about the fitrep.
More specifically, majors who wish to attend these schools next year have until May 31 — the end of the current reporting period — to get their bosses to write an evaluation that includes a recommendation for admittance.
Students attending the schools — Command and Staff College at Quantico, Va.; the Naval War College at Newport, R.I.; Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.; or the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala. — in the 2007-2008 academic year will now be selected by a board.
That’s how officers were selected before the Corps made the resident course a voluntary assignment in 1999, said Maj. Tim Bryant, assignments monitor for majors with combat service support specialties.
Bryant said officials are making the change in order to populate the resident course with a more even mix of officers from the various communities that make up the Marine air-ground task force.
It also means tighter competition to get into those seats, since officers who want to go will now be competing with those who haven’t asked.
Lt. Col. Emily Elder, head of plans and programs for officer assignments, said it is desirable to have educated officers across the MAGTF to improve the effectiveness of the overall organization.
“With a voluntary process, there are no guarantees what mix of students will show up for any given academic year,” Elder said. “As has been noticed since the Marine Corps adopted a voluntary process, some [military occupational specialties] are underrepresented or not represented at all.”
Picking the right officers for the resident course directly influences each class’s capacity for sharing “experiences, challenges, techniques and procedures and by questioning how doctrine, new equipment and tactics will affect their MOS community,” she said.
This year’s graduating class at Command and Staff College includes 40 aviation officers, 31 combat service support officers and 27 ground-pounders, 18 of whom are infantry officers specifically, according to the school’s personnel records.
Some highly populated communities, such as military police and motor transportation, have no officers in the graduating class, according to the records.
‘The box of books’
All majors are required to go through the course in order to be eligible for promotion, but most never attend classes on campus, opting instead to complete the nonresident correspondence course that some have nicknamed “the box of books.”
Although the Command and Staff College offers an optional master’s degree in military studies to its resident students, Bryant said some majors would simply rather stay in the fleet than go back to college.
The stated objective of the Corps’ college is to “produce skilled war fighters who are proficient planners.” Its curriculum includes lessons in war fighting from the sea, operational art, culture and interagency operations and Arabic language, according to the school’s Web site.
Promotion boards don’t care whether a major completes the required course in person or from a distance. They concern themselves only with whether the course was completed, Bryant said.
Marines who are not selected by the board for the resident course will have to complete their required education as a nonresident student to stay competitive for promotion.
Bryant said selection for a resident course will depend on “performance, performance, performance,” meaning the board will base its selections primarily on the fitness reports of eligible Marines.
The only way for a major to stand out as someone who genuinely wants to attend the resident course is to plant a bug in the ear of the senior officers who write their fitness reports, Bryant said.
He said the board will convene in late November, run through December and take into account all fitness reports written through the end of this year’s annual reporting requirement period for majors, which will be over by June.
Roughly 160 students will be selected from the pool of majors who rate permanent change of station or assignment orders. The field then will be winnowed, reducing it to those who have not been passed over for promotion to lieutenant colonel and have not previously been a resident student at the course. But even with the field narrowed, competition for the school seats will be fierce.
Command and Staff College will graduate 98 Marines on June 7, a number Bryant said represents between 53 and 62 percent of those who applied for the resident course. In this regard, he said, getting into a resident program is already tough.
But school seats have not increased, and the board will be considering a greater number of Marines than those who typically volunteer. Bryant said it’s too early to tell how many Marines will be looked at by the board each year — the number of eligible majors will be determined by the deployment cycle and promotions between then and now — but he estimated that the board will review around 300 majors from the combat service support MOSs alone, with hundreds more presumably coming from the ground and aviation communities.
“So numbers-wise, it will be more competitive,” Bryant said.
Majors who have completed their required professional military education through nonresident courses at local educational assistance offices remain eligible for the resident course, but that may change with the publication of a Corps-wide message due out at the end of the summer that will further clarify how the board will be conducted, Bryant said.
Ellie