ROTC program wraps up first year on campus

The BVU Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) program is the newest in the country and is wrapping up its first year of existence on our campus.

The program is for students with two, three or four years of college remaining and allows them to take Army leadership courses as electives alongside their normal college curriculum.

Eight students participated in the program this year, and numbers are looking to grow for next year. There will be an additional four students coming to campus with full tuition, room, and board scholarships, as well as a number of students that are already members of the National Guard coming to campus to take classes.

There are two BVU ROTC students traveling this summer for training opportunities, and Lt. Jared Gledhill plans on seeing that number increase next year.

Gledhill is the BVU ROTC representative. Gledhill graduated from the Iowa State ROTC program in 2005 and has worked and taught at Iowa State and Drake since then, minus a deployment to Iraq in 2007-2008.
“Everyone on campus has been great, I could not ask for more. I would like to thank everyone for the way that I have been treated,” Gledhill said.
He predicts the program numbers will grow to 15-20 students by this time next year.

“Next year we will be more involved with the campus during the first semester. We will be helping with orientation and Homecoming to name a few things,” Gledhill said.

ROTC has plans to partner with the outdoor adventure club for some activities to include geo-trekking around Storm Lake, and a paintball event. Further, they plan to work with the Emerging Leaders organization on some hands-on events in the fall. Gledhill also plans on sponsoring a movie series over the winter to look at military leadership.

The ROTC program at BVU has started a Twitter and Facebook page to increase awareness of the program and to aid recruitment.

“This will allow people to keep up with what is going on and to ask current students what it is like to be part of the ROTC program at BVU,” Gledhill said.

To further increase numbers in the program, Gledhill work a lot with admissions and National Guard recruiters that are in the high schools around the state to let people know BVU has an ROTC program.

Gledhill describes the benefits of the program as numerous, including things like attracting students, leadership training, scholarships, the feeling of belonging to something greater than yourself, and service to country while working on your education.

“The best part of my job is getting to watch students grow and mature as leaders and people; the opportunity that I have to see a student come in and grow and develop in to a person that will go take charge of a platoon of soldiers I have yet to see anything that matches it,” Gledhill said.

One of the misconceptions is that you have to start ROTC as freshman. As long as a student has 4 semesters left they can pursue a commission. Another misconception is that you have to want to be in the army to take ROTC classes. Anyone can take the MILS 100 and MILS 200 classes, which are leadership classes. It also includes the MILS 160 classes which is the workout class.

“One perception of the army that I hope we have helped to disprove is that everyone in the army is a door-kicker and trigger-puller and a steely-eyed-killer. The fact is, the army has people in every job under the sun,” Gledhill said.