Peter Bleich
02:00:03 PM
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I appreciate that and we will get started in just a few seconds.
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OK, my name is people I I am the enrollment and scholarship officer for Army ROTC at Colorado State University and our partnership school at the University of Northern Colorado.
Little background on myself. I commissioned through Army ROTC quite awhile ago. Spent 30 years in the service for an active and another 26 in the army reserves as a core of Engineers Officer in the army, and I've been doing this job at CSU for about 17 years, so I'm very familiar with this.
As we get started, I just want to let you know that if you have any questions, please go ahead and type them in and I will get to answering questions at the end. So if you've got something that's on your mind, we will definitely get to it.
here's what the agenda looks like. I'm gonna talk about ROTC. What it is some of the misperceptions I'll talk a little bit about program information, RTC overall, and then a little more specifically for our program at Colorado State University, I'll talk about scholarship opportunities. Obviously paying for college is a big concern these days.
Then I'll talk about a few other opportunities that that individuals like to hear about. Because it's options you will have when you're in the program and then will finish up with questions.
So with that, let's get on to.
And in its simplest form, it's a college elective class, so enrolling in the class and leadership lab does not commit you to military service. You do not get committed to military service until you sign a contract, so you can take the class and or leadership lab.
For up to two years, uh, as you're deciding as to whether or not army ROTC presents opportunities you'd like to pursue, and with no military service obligation, the two levels of instruction. The basic course is the portion of the class where you do not have to commit to going into the army as a Lieutenant when you graduate. The advanced course, however, does require you to sign a scholarship.
It is for your junior and senior year and what that contract really means whenever you sign it, whether it's at the beginning of your junior year or if you decide earlier. The contract means that you are committing to complete the Army ROTC class and the requirements to Commission as a second Lieutenant in the army.
And that's that's essentially what's going to obligate you to military service. The Army ROTC class is the first step in our professional leadership education because it is what is required in order for you to Commission as a second Lieutenant, you will go on from there after you graduating Commission, should you decide to continue with the program, and this program is really designed to do a few things. One, it's it's designed to.
Uh, enhance your knowledge of yourself as well as knowledge about the army, which for most incoming freshman will be fairly minimal. Unless you're a military dependent and it's also really designed to increase your confidence level in your academics in your physical performance, physical fitness and and abilities that you may not even realize that you have yet.
So a little background for Army ROTC. You can see by this slide that especially in the upper left hand corner of the one that shows, and I'm really a little disappointed that all the labels don't show up very well. Army ROTC.
Is the largest producer of officers for the army.
We produce about 78% of the armies officers now that split between the active component, active duty army and the reserve component, which which consists of army reserves or Army National Guard. Other sources are West Point which produces about 12% or so, but they they produce only for the active army.
And then there's also officer candidate school, which will produce for and they do about 10% and there a combination of four active army or Army Reserve Army National Guard. So we are by far the largest piece and for the active army.
That portion art of ROTC is about 45% or so of the active army, so a large large portion you'll see connect command missions for a number of commissioning lieutenants and things like that that you probably won't be concerned with until you make a decision as to whether or not you want to continue on and become an officer.
So Army ROTC again in it at its core, is leadership development and this slide just to pick some of the more famous individuals both in the military.
In our government and in private sector that have gone through ROTC and he have become great leaders in one form or another for the country.
So a little more specifically about our vision as it relates to our program at Colorado State is that we want to be a world class.
Training program that will prepare our cadets who are scholars, athletes and leaders.
And train them to be motivated to be a as good a leader as they can possibly be, and prepared to do well when they go to their first duty assignment. That's really the bottom line of what we're trying to do.
So about the program. I talked a little bit about basic course, an advanced course, so I'll give you a little more information here. Basic course. The military science level one in military science level 2, which is essentially the freshmen, and then the sophomore year. This gives you an idea of what.
The course contact is really aimed at, so you're going to learn basic soldier skills, some physical fittness, um, an intro to leadership lessons in ethics, and also some introduction to critical thinking skills.
Military science level to the sophomore year is going to build on that as all the years do. And you're going to get a little more into leadership skills and start developing technical and technical technical skills while continuing to develop your critical thinking.
Now when you get to the Advanced Course by then you had to have made a commitment to Commission as a second Lieutenant the Ms 3 year the junior year is highly focused on leadership because we need to develop your leadership so that you are prepared to become a Lieutenant when you graduate and the leadership peace with the Ms 3 year it revolves around the fact that you are going to be placed in multiple leadership positions.
It could be as a squad leader as a platoon Sergeant, a platoon leader. It could be during physical fitness training. Leadership labs are field training, exercise, a variety of situations, an all of which where you're going to receive feedback on how well you performed as a leader.
And this feedback is intended to help you develop so that you understand all the things that you've done really well, and we want you to continue to perform in that manner. It's also going to tell you some areas where you might have had some weaknesses where you can improve, and that feedback, hopefully, will will help you focus on those areas so that you can continue to improve.
And then during the advance course, you're also going to take a military history class which is required to Commission as a second Lieutenant. Now that class we try to get juniors to take it so that it is not something that could potentially stop you from commissioning when you graduate due to scheduling issues, but it really can be taken anytime during the final two years. The Ms four year is the senior year, and this is the.
And that's final preparation for becoming a second Lieutenant, so some of the things that you're going to learn here is you're going to learn staff functions because you're going to perform as a battalion staff. You're going to be planning for the execution of all of the functions that.
Program does you are going to start practicing and understanding more about evaluations and counseling that you will do with your.
Noncommissioned officers your squad leaders your platoon. Sergeant. Things like that and you're also going to have an introduction to military law.
Leadership labs are intended to be.
Mostly like a practical exercise, you're going to take a lot of the things that you are learning in class, and at some point apply them during leadership labs. Now each week's leadership lab does not necessarily correspond exactly to what you're learning in class, but over the course of a semester in a year, you will be taking the things you learn in class and applying them in a hands-on fashion.
I would say as a best guess, probably 70% or more of our leadership labs are outdoors and hands on so it could be land navigation. Learning how to navigate via map and compass and Train Association. It can be tactical labs where we were evaluating how well our juniors are performing as leaders in a tactical scenario that they've been given and as freshmen and sophomores.
You're really learning the basic soldier skills an watching and learning from what the juniors do, so that you understand what it's going to take to be a leader in those situations, but also so you can start to evaluate how you want to be a leader. Everyone's leadership style is a little different, so it gives you some time to think about what a leader did and how you would do it, whether it would be the same, some differences, things like that.
The Ms Fours are the primary instructors or demonstrators. They will also give feedback to the Ms threes, so that's that's really about the way that leadership labs go.
Physical fitness training is a part of our program. It is required for any cadet who has signed a contract and it is highly recommended for anyone who is looking at the possibility of continuing. Whether that's applying for a scholarship or just planning to Commission as a Lieutenant, physical fitness is going to be an important part of the program. We conduct ours Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 6:00 to 7:00 AM.
Again, the exercises and the things you're going to be doing are led by juniors and supervised by senior cadets and Cadrez, and we're really focused on whole body fitness. Now. Many of you may have heard that, uhm?
The Army physical fitness test is changing and that is true. It scheduled to change to the Army Combat Fitness Test in October and we are in the process of planning for that change and we will instruct you and help you to learn and become very proficient at that as we go along through the physical fitness sessions.
The other thing that I'd like everyone to understand is that we don't expect you to come in here and be a superstar on the army physical fitness test, or when it changes to the Army Combat Fitness Test. The program is designed to bring you from whatever level of fitness you are up to, where you need to be for the army standards or where you want to go depending on the branch you want to go into at some point in time. So if you're a great runner.
And you're not particularly strong at upper body. Don't worry about it will work with you to get you there and vice versa if you're a weightlifter. But you don't run much, we will get you to where you need to go through the physical fitness program.
Now this slide I just want to touch on really quickly because it's divided into basic course. In advanced course you'll see there are no different pieces to the advanced course, but with the basic course there are different different entry methods.
And I know we've got a couple of folks that are looking at being transfer students or coming in as not a true freshman. True freshman would come in and be in the yellow blocks progression.
Lateral entry can be a couple of things. It can be because you are prior service or because you are in the reserve or National Guard and you have constructive credit for some of the classes. But you will have to come into the program at whatever level you are. Academically, you have to stay aligned and then the last option is for someone and this might apply to transfer students. If you're coming in at a junior level, you would have to attend basic camp.
You're coming in as a sophomore. You've actually got a couple of options, either doubling up on classes to meet prerequisites for the junior year, or going to basic camp next year, but that is another entry option so that you can line yourself up to enter the junior year and work toward a Commission.
So let's get on Tord these scholarship opportunities. These are all the scholarship opportunities that the army has. I know they're broken down into a variety of methods. I think we have one person on that is going to be a senior in high school, so the high school scholarship, which is an on line application because it's done nationally, would be your entry path for most of you coming in. The scholarship opportunities would be campus based.
Or guaranteed reserve forces duty scholarships, which are sponsored by the National Guard or the Army Reserve. Now there's a couple things you need to know that where they differ.
Those scholarships require you to enlist in a unit, so you're going to have a part time job requirement, but they're going to still pay the same as all the other scholarships do, so you'll get that benefit. Plus the part time job piece.
So basic scholarship eligibility? I won't go through all of this, most of it is pretty obvious when you read down through the bullets, but the couple of pieces that I'm going to highlight, our word says minimum cumulative GPA and minimum AC T or SAT score. Those are minimums and I do have a bullet down at the bottom that says eligibility does not.
Equal competitive since they are merit based and.
As unfortunate as it maybe, uhm, the Army doesn't have enough money to give everyone a scholarship. You will end up competing for scholarships. So minimum GPA and AC TRSAT score is what you have to have in order to be able to apply in just a second. I'll talk about what it's like to be competitive.
Because the higher you are with a GPA or an AC TR S80, the more competitive you will be.
So for a campus based scholarships, these are rules of thumb, but there not an exact science, so I'm going to talk about each of these just a little bit. Obviously you do have to be a High School graduate.
And typically a GPA above equal to or above A-35.
But not none of these are an absolute requirement. College GPA, typically at or above a 3, two and a CTRS 80 equal to or above 24 or 1180 respectively.
And currently with the army physical fitness test, a score of 225 or higher, which is about 75 per event. what I do want to say is you don't have to be necessarily hitting these marks in every category because we're looking at the whole person. So if you do your 38IN high school with a 35 GPA, but you had an AC T of 21 or 22.
OK, yeah that one's a little low, but you've counteracted that with, you know, being even higher in the GPA range. And if you do well in the army physical fitness test, you've kind of counteracted it. So these are kind of general guidelines, but you don't have to look at any one of 'em as being specifically having to meet it in order to be competitive for a scholarship. But what I will say is, the more of these you've got in your toolkit, the more competitive you will be.
So what does the campus based scholarship selection look like? The first part is just initiating an application and you do that at CSU through main in the Army ROTC office. Once you are registered for the class and lab are in it, rolled cadet. There will be some basic paperwork to do that which is pretty minimal. And then once you're in the connect command system all you have to do is come see me and say I'd like to apply for a scholarship.
I go into the system, check a block, and that application is now in um, we will have to have a copy of your final high school transcript and an AC T or SAT score.
You will have to complete a connectome Connect Command Form 104 R, which is an academic plan worksheet. What this form does is it help it.
It helps you stay on track to graduation because you are going to pre plan out your entire college karere with classes now does that mean that once you do this you can't change? No, it doesn't. We understand that a lot of things happen. A class main fill up and you're not able to get into it. Or you may change your mind on an elective that you want, or a variety of things.
This form will be reviewed every semester and if there are changes you just updated as you go up completing the army physical fitness test. And like I said once it changes, it will be completing the Army Combat Fitness Test. You do have to complete a face to face interview with the professor of military science, our professor of military science will be changing this summer. Lieutenant Colonel Thomas, who will be leaving usually would sit with you for about 15 or 20 minutes.
An Lieutenant Colonel Tillman, who will be our new professor of military science. I suspect the process will be very, very similar. There is an on line background experience form. You'll have to complete.
And typically what the cadets have said is that usually takes no more than about 15 minutes give or take a few you have to complete and activities list because, like I said, We look at the whole person. So we want to know what you've been doing what not only what do you do have you done academically but where have you demonstrated leadership? What kind of clubs have you been in how about playing sports.
Part time or full time work experience. There's all kinds of things that really round you out, and we want to know all that because all of that will be taken into account.
And then we will also initiate a physical and an eye exam that will be paid for by the army. Because you do have to become medically qualified in order to actually receive any benefits.
Once all of that is complete, we submit packets or their first reviewed by our local selection board and then we submit them through our brigade to connect command for approval. Now we have a limited number of allocations every year so.
Like I said, being merit based we will fill all of our allocations. After that we've had some pretty good success requesting additional scholarships through Brigade an. Whenever there's money available, we've typically had a lot of really qualified cadets, and we have had great success in getting some extra scholarships, even above what we were allocated.
So what do the scholarships pay for while they pay full tuition and mandatory fees? And that is regardless of state residency, so it doesn't matter if you're an in state student or an out of state student, it will pay full tuition and fees or you have another option. You can select the room and board option, which is a flat $5000 paid to your bank account so you can use it to pay whatever you need.
Tuition and fees is less than $5000. That may be a great option for you because you can use it to pay off whatever is remaining of your tuition and fees due to other scholarships or grants or anything.
And then the rest of the money is yours. Use it for your room and board or your rent or whatever. what I will tell you is room and board option is considered taxable income. Now for most that will not affect you because for most of you you will not be in a text bracket where where you're going to have to pay taxes on it.
There are rare cases where that might happen, but it that's pretty unusual. You will also get a $1200 per year book allowance 600 for each semester for your books and you will get a monthly stipend, which is a tax free, essentially a living allowance of 420 a month from the semester that you contract through graduation. As long as you don't extend graduation past what your normal graduation would be.
Everyone wants to know what service obligation there is. What is all this going to cost me? Or once you sign a contract, whether it's scholarship or non scholarship, you'll incur an 8 year service application. There are a couple of ways of fulfilling that. If you go active duty, you must remain on active duty. A minimum of four years unless you branch aviation then you're going to be on active duty for five.
Because you're gonna be in flight school for about a year and a half, uh. The remainder, the obligation beacon can be completed in a couple of ways in the Army Reserve in the Army National Guard, or in the inactive ready reserve IR, which is essentially a manpower pool, so fees obli you could do for years on active duty. Say I want to. I want my release from active duty go into the IR and never do another days service, but because you have not completed the eight years.
There is always the possibility that you get called out of the IR. It's a very very low possibility, but it is a possibility nonetheless. If you go into the army reserves. It's all eight years in an active unit. Unless you are non scholarship. If you are non scholarship then it's only six years in an active unit and you can go into the IR for the final two and that also applies to the National Guard.
Now, some of the other opportunities that are available. I've talked about the Army Reserve in the National Guard. We do have students every year that that may not be competitive for a scholarship or they want to go in and use one of the G RFD scholarship. So they enlist in the reserve or National Guard. Sometimes they use a scholarship, sometimes they'll use tuition assistance. GI bill benefits things like that. It's a part time job and.
Um, there's some some really great aspects of doing that while you're in college. Uhm, if you are looking to actually shadow a Lieutenant and understand a little more about what is required of an officer, what their duties are like, what the responsibilities are, things like that? It's an opera. It's an awesome opportunity to find that out. The one thing I will say is you should be pretty sure that you want to do that.
Because you do have to sign an enlistment contract. Uh? So if you decide that no, you don't want to become an officer, you still have that enlistment contract that you're going to be required to fulfill. So it's an awesome opportunity, but.
I'll just say that it's something that you want to be pretty sure that you want to fulfill, just in case you decide that becoming an officer is not for you.
Now there is specialty training up and you hear about this training for soldiers all the time, so this specialty training you are required to have signed a contract. So airborne, which is going to learn how to parachute out of.
Aircraft air assault, which is repelling out of high.
Copters and sling loading and things like that mountain warfare, cadette troop leading leadership training, which is where you go to an active duty post and shadow a Lieutenant to find out what it's like to be on active duty at a post. All of these opportunities are there. Most of them are aimed at the after the sophomore year, but there are exceptions. So whether it's you contract with a four year scholarship and do it after a freshman year, that's highly unusual.
After the sophomore year is much more common, and even after the junior year, although advanced camp at Fort Knox takes priority because that is a commissioning requirement, some of the non classroom activities I've already talked about a little bit. Our leadership lab which happens once a week on Thursday afternoons. We do a once a semester field training exercise where we get away from campus and you'll spend.
What's typically a Friday, Saturday and Sunday morning at a military post? Sometimes it's Fort Carson, sometimes it's the Air Force Academy training area that there could. That's only using the summer. So during the school year were able to go to.
It's been awhile, but we have used camp, Guernsey, Wyoming, which is a National Guard Training Area so we try to get you into a more realistic aspect because that gives you more perspective on whether or not you want to continue and we highly recommend attendance now, for those of you that may want to get into a very competitive environment are Ranger Challenge is sort of like our varsity sport are Ranger challenge teams.
And I repeat teams because we typically have two and we have had as many as three will compete against Ranger challenge teams from other universities within our geographical area, which is that western half of our brigade area. So it includes New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and Wyoming.
Um, we have a cannon crew, so you may have heard about the Canon tradition. Is the 75 millimeter howitzer that we fire at home football games? Whenever are.
Our football team scores either a field goal or a touchdown. It's a very popular activity, so that requires a sign up and being trained to operate the Canon, but very popular. So if you're going to go to the football game anyway, you can be at field level and firing the cannon and having a great time doing that. We also have a push up crew and we have other activities like scabbard and blade which is really a volunteer service organization.
We have a color guard so really depends on what you are interested in, but there are other non classroom activities. We run a zero week so it's also referred to as our freshmen or new cadet orientation. It starts a day before the official move in for freshman and it is open to any new cadet so that you can come and start to get to know.
Your peers returning cadets the cadrez start to understand the program kind of get settled in and ready for starting your college career and ROTC classes.
The majority of our zero week is really focused on Team Building, so we really want you to get to know your peers and the other cadets because we are after all, a large team and the more you can work as a team, the better you're going to do in life. And in this program.
There is language, a language scholarship program. It is for some very specific languages that are mostly centered around Middle Eastern or Asian languages. So if you are interested in any of those languages and once you have signed a contract, if you take those classes and get a B or higher than you get extra pay. It's kind of an incentive to be a little more knowledgeable about.
Other countries, their languages, there are cultures, and being fluent in those languages sometimes I also get questions about study abroad and that goes kind of hand in hand with the language program, because, again, you're going to be learning about other cultures, so it is a good thing. It is something you can do with ROTC.
What I will say is if you do decide to do a study abroad semester, start planning that or or try to plan that as best you can for spring semester of your sophomore year, because you will still need to take the class and we can do that as an online or a distance learning class so that you meet the per requisites for the junior year.
And and it won't interfere with the then the junior year, which is a very high priority piece for your leadership development.
With that my contact information is here so you can jot it down or review it anytime you like. I am open to emails. I respond to emails as quickly as possible so my email contact is here or you can go to our website and there's always a button there where you want more information that will generate a system email directly to me. Or you can call the number on the screen is my office number.
Which I will get a voicemail right now because we are teleworking. So the other possibility would be to call my cell phone which is 970-988-0174. So you're welcome to call that during my normal work hours. I have that on and will try to answer unless I'm engaged in something else and I will certainly call you back with that.
I'll ask if you have any questions and as I see those pop up if there are any, I will answer them for the good of everyone that's been participating, and, uh.
If there aren't any, we will finish the session and I would like to say thank you for your time and I really hope to see you in the program come this fall. My perspective on that is that it is a great no risk option that can.
Help you learn more about your abilities, about what the army is about, career opportunities, whether that be a stepping stone or a full career in the army, and some scholarship opportunities that can help you leave college either debt free or very close to debt free, which is an opportunity that a lot of people don't take advantage of. and I think a lot of it is because they're not even aware of it. So and.
Again, if you decide that it's not for you, um, first couple of years you can take to explore it and then decide so that you're deciding on what you know what you've experienced, what you've learned, and it's not just something as far as hearsay or someone's opinion. And even if it's a valued opinion, it's still an opinion, so you get to make those decisions on your own.
So with that, do we have any questions? I see a few popping up.
Anna Johnson
02:37:57 PM
How many cadets come into the program at CSU as freshmen with scholarships?
OK, the first question how many cadets come into the program at CSU as freshmen with scholarships? That one is a little hard to answer, but I'll try to do my best because the scholarships are national scholarships. So if you are applying for a national scholarship, you put down your preference list of up to 7 schools. If you are selected by the National Selection Board.
Many times you will have an opportunity to select from A.
Depending on what you list in your in your list, an out of State School and in state school.
And sometimes a private school. So the number that we get that actually choose CSU varies. Typically we are somewhere between.
Um, we've had his viewers about 6:00, I think, uh, but it varies year to year. Um, simply because we can't control where people want to go to school and who gets selected by the national boards. So I hope that.
That answers your question about as well as I can.
Lucas Sherman
02:39:15 PM
Is zero week still happening during the COVID 19 pandemic?
OK, the next question is zero week still happening during COVID-19 we are planning right now for zero week to happen. Now we realize that that may cause us to change a few of the things that we do this year so.
Over the next probably month we will be.
In close contact with the University for what the University will allow us to do, but we expect we will have some sort of zero week. And since it's only one day prior to the official move in, I think ours is going to be more changed by what the University allows in any confined space.
Really is typically about 30 to 40 new incoming students, but it also incorporates cadrez and returning students that are going to help out with the activities, so we are just going to have to follow the University guidelines and we will make adjustments as necessary.
Lucas Sherman
02:40:39 PM
Will we be able to come to see you during orientation week?
Uh, is will we be able to come see us during orientation week? Uhm, and I guess the part I'm not sure about there is, are you referring to orientation week during the week prior to.
Classes, or are you referring to these virtual orientations? And again we are still teleworking were not considered critical to be on campus yet. So coming to CS may or may not be an option depending on the timing. However, what I will say is if you contact me, we might be able to connect via zoom. I have an iPad so we can always do FaceTime if you have an Apple product and can do FaceTime.
Anna Johnson
02:41:51 PM
About how many cadets are in the ROTC program here?
Um, we can find a way to connect and last resort obviously is always going back to a phone call so that we can connect and answer questions and make sure that that whatever is on your mind, those questions get answered and you understand what's going on.
OK, next question is in regards to how many cadets we have in the program, and again that varies year to year because decent depending on the size of the class and how many transfer students, how many freshmen it varies. Last year we were at about 140 are typical is usually around 150 cadets in the program. We have been as high. If you go back about.
67 maybe 8 years ago we were as high as 200. That was unusual so we would love to get back into the 160 to 170 range and I expect this year.
To be still in the 1:40 to 1:50, uh but I'm. I'm also hoping that the COVID-19 issues and the changes to orientation all going virtual do not severely affect that. So I really appreciate the opportunities to give these webinars and answer these questions and hopefully we will still get really good participation because our freshman class is.
Always our largest class and that's the one piece about, uh, where we stand right now with the virtual orientations that.
That's a little bit in question.
Does anyone have anymore questions? I think I am out of.
Questions that have been submitted.
I will wait just another minute or so to see if, uh, anymore questions.
And, Uh, I'm coming really close to the, uh.
To the 45 minute mark. So I kept it.
Lucas Sherman
02:44:03 PM
Thank you for your time
About where we wanted to.
And I appreciate that the fact that that.
Do you think this was worthwhile?
Thanks again everyone. Have a great day and I believe that this broadcast has been recorded, so if there's anything that you need to go back to and review, it will be available for you.
Have a great day and we hope to see you in the fall.
Anna Johnson
02:44:45 PM
thank you!