LEGACY & VALUE
With Strength Comes Responsibility
Officers in the Army possess the skills necessary to lead others through the most challenging of circumstances.
The Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) was born when President Woodrow Wilson signed the National Defense Act of 1916. Since its inception, Army ROTC has provided leadership and military training at schools and universities across the country and has commissioned more than a half million Officers. It is the largest commissioning source in the American military.
Army ROTC is a diverse group of men and women with more than 20,000 Cadets currently enrolled. Women have been an integral part of Army ROTC since the first group of women was commissioned in 1976. Today, women constitute 20 percent of the Cadets.
Army ROTC has a total of 273 host programs with more than 1,100 partnership and affiliate schools across the country. It produces approximately 60 percent of the Second Lieutenants who join the active Army, Army Reserve and Army National Guard. More than 40 percent of current Active Duty Army General Officers were commissioned through ROTC. Army ROTC provides Cadets with the character-building aspects of a diverse, self-disciplined civilian education with tough, centralized leadership development training.
Prominent Army ROTC Alumni
- Colin Powell, former Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
- George C. Marshall, former Chief of Staff of the Army
- Samuel Alito, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court
- Samuel Walton, founder of Walmart
- Lenny Wilkens, most wins as NBA coach
- With Strength Comes Responsibility
WITH STRENGTH COMES RESPONSIBILITY
I decided the best way to serve my country is to lead and the best way to do that is to go to college get an education and do it through ROTC. American Soldiers from all around the country are being led by Officers that have a whole variety of backgrounds, engineers, nurses, social sciences, those kind of people bring skills and diversity and education to the table that the Army needs.
They pay me to finish school and now they are paying me to fly aircraft and these are multi million dollar aircraft. I get helicopters once a month and my Cadets are on them. So they get used to the familiarity of understanding the complexities of dealing with multi million dollar equipment and aircraft so they are able to use it.
We're handing you the authority and responsibility of being in charge of 40 - 50 people and saying, "They're yours now. Their livelihood is your hands," and that is an awesome responsibility. A lot of the experiences -- like in terms of my personal responsibility here -- I'm going to continue that on as a platoon leader.
One of the greatest things besides confidence of self is the ability to lead under stressful conditions because that's what our young tactical Officers and leaders need. It's my job to prepare myself professionally and mentally and in every aspect to lead enlisted Soldiers and other lower ranking Officers as I move up.
The greatest part of my job is watching parents pin on the gold bar on the shoulders of that newly commissioned, newly minted second lieutenant. Because I know they are going out to serve our country and serve our soldiers. I am honored to be in the same boots and the same uniform as people who wear the uniform now.
