Career direction - Corps makes it easier to find your way

Stories by Gordon Lubold
Times staff writer

Finally, a map for navigating through the wilderness of your career, and you don't have to fold it up again. The Corps has rolled out a career-management tool to help Marines find their way through the often confusing byways of their education and professional development in an online program called the "MOS Road Map" that will take them just down the road or cross-country.

Senior Corps officials tout the program as a way to make Marines more competitive for promotion or to help them prepare to separate from the Corps with the training and certification they need to find the right job. There is even a plan in the works to give bonus points to corporals and below for completing certain education relating to their jobs.

The road maps are part of an enlisted-education overhaul taking place at Training and Education Command, Quantico, Va. While the polish is being put on some of those initiatives, the road map is up, running and it's ready to turn the key.

For years, Corps officials have been talking about just how increasingly educated, smart and ambitious Marines are - a far cry from the typical enlisted Marine even two decades ago. But the maze of education programs, certifications and other training opportunities have become so convoluted that to many Marines, they are a mystery.

But now, there are no more secrets.

"A Marine can sit down and plot his or her own course, whether it's going to be four years or 30 years in the Marine Corps," said Lt. Col. Bryan McCoy, operations officer for Training and Education Command. "Following this plan allows a Marine to intelligently chart it out and set himself up for success."

Marine Commandant Gen. Mike Hagee announced the program in a Corpswide message Sept. 8 after officials spent at least two years developing it.

Earlier this year, Training and Education Command unveiled dozens of new "road maps" for each military occupational specialty and each grade. The maps are essentially lists of recommended courses, certifications and other training a Marine can, or should, accomplish. It's relevant for the lance corporal who's been in for four years and may see a more appealing life outside the Corps - as much as it is for a gunnery sergeant planning a military career.

Each grade and rank has a list of both recommended or required training and education, starting after basic training and MOS school and continuing through to a bachelor's degree, MOS-related college-level courses, and beyond. This education puts Marines in better position to get the jobs they want after the Corps.

The idea is to give Marines a variety of routes to advance to the next level - whatever that may be. But it's important to remember that the road maps don't force the hand of monitors or commanders to assign Marines to certain billets or schoolhouses, McCoy said. But it gives everyone options.

"It's not a mandate. It's a template. The monitor isn't beholden to send you [to a certain job]," McCoy said.

One of the added benefits of the Road Map is it gives life to a Corps mentoring program, introduced Oct. 1. That program encourages every Marine - from fire-team leader on up the chain - to sit with his Marines individually and discuss ways to improve themselves.

"When that senior leader sits down with that Marine, he has that road map in front of him," McCoy said. "The mentoring breathes life into the road map." And vice versa.

The road maps will evolve as training and education standards, and opportunities, change. Information on the maps could look different several months later, so officials encourage leathernecks to check their maps often. Marines also will see other changes; including a more interactive and personalized online MOS Road Map, new promotion points for cutting scores and new resident staff academies, within the next year or so.

The online system will become more sophisticated. Now, each map is a PDF file administrators must change manually and re-scan into the system.

Officials hope to make the system more personalized so Marines would have accounts that allow them to update their coursework and review their rifle-range and physical-fitness scores along with other personnel information, McCoy said.

Meanwhile, Training and Education Command plans to offer new resident courses for sergeants and other ranks that will be more focused on common combat skills than just common skills. The goal is less redundancy, more relevancy. The "programs of instruction" are being rewritten, McCoy said.

Maj. Gen. Thomas Jones, former commanding general of Training and Education Command, introduced the MOS Road Map in a letter he wrote before he retired Sept. 8. In it, he dangled an appealing proposal in front of thousands of corporals and below angling for promotion: bonus points for cutting scores.

Privates through corporals who complete distance learning and college courses related to their MOS could be awarded additional self-education bonus points toward composite scores. The bonus-point program is not a done deal, but before Jones retired, he hinted that the program probably will happen soon.

Jones' introductory note hinting at the bonus points reflects the spirit of the MOS Road Map program.

"I encourage you - especially at the beginning of your career - to concentrate on learning all you can in your MOS," he wrote. "The better you are at your MOS, the better your unit will be - and, collectively, the better our Corps will be."

You don't need a Global Positioning System to manage your career. At least not anymore, to hear Corps officials tell it.

The new MOS Road Map, which is online, will help Marines figure out which education, certification or other training they need to further their careers.

For example, take a Marine in one of five motor transport jobs, including organizational automotive maintenance (military occupational specialty 3521); intermediate automotive mechanic (3522); fuel and electrical systems mechanic (3524); crash/fire/rescue vehicle mechanic (3525); or a motor transport maintenance chief (3529).

That Marine can look up his road map by rank and see available options to move his career forward. One road map delineates how a corporal, for example, could complete the automotive intermediate maintenance course at Camp Lejeune, N.C., to set himself up for a number of jobs the road map lists just for him.

He could become, one day, the noncommissioned officer in charge of hazardous materials/environmental compliance, the parts layettes noncommissioned officer in charge or the tool-room NCOIC. Or, he could apply to do one of six special-duty assignments.

What other professional military education should he undertake? Our corporal could take the Fundamentals of Marine Corps Leadership, a Marine Corps Institute course, or the command-sponsored corporal's course or enroll in the sergeants' distance education program.

So he wants to get even smarter? He could read "Battle Leadership" by Adolf Von Schell, the "Red Badge of Courage" by Stephen Crane, and nine other books. Really impress the commanding officer by reading "The United States Marines: A History," by Edward Howard Simmons.

The road map for that corporal also lists the voluntary education he could take, including three MCI courses relating to his field, and up to five other distance learning courses for general edification.

Go to www.tecom.usmc.mil/g3/roadmap php to find your road map.

Ellie

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