Air Force ROTC cadets conduct surveys at Hill Air Force Base
Air Force Reserve Officers Training Corps. Detachment 860 of Utah State University found what the military expects of them when they leave.
Cadets in the AFROTC went down to Hill Air Force Base and conducted surveys and interviews to see what senior noncommissioned officers (NCO) expect out of lieutenants.
They conducted the study “to provide military officers with firsthand advice from the enlisted personal that they will be working with,” said Bryan Butler, a senior in USU’s ROTC program.
When ROTC students leave the University they will be lieutenants wthout any firsthand knowledge until their commission.
“When a lieutenant first commissions, he is basically put under the wing of the senior NCO because most senior NCOs have been in for 20 years and a lieutenant has only been in less than one,” Butler said.
“It comes to a difference between book knowledge and tacit knowledge or on the job experience,” said, David Kennedy, a sophomore in the program.
Captain Lovewell, professor of aerospace studies, told Detachment 860 that Hill Air Force base is so close by and they should take advantage of it.
They went down on the weekend of March 23 – 25.
“We did 80 interviews on Friday and we did 120 surveys, and so we had quite a few cadets who helped out,” Butler said.
They will compile their results and they will be used in a textbook for the 2006 school year Butler added.
“It’s just going to be information so that the ROTC students, like ourselves, in the future will have this information so that they will know to what’s expected of them,” he said.
When lieutenants first work with the officers the cadets will only know what they’ve read.
“We’ll have the book knowledge but if you haven’t implemented it, it’s a totally different,” Butler said. “We’re trying to get that information out to the lieutenants prior them actually commissioning.”
All of the information from the surveys and interviews are going to be compiled into books for cadets to study all over the nation.
“As lieutenants we’re coming in with zero experience and we’re placed in charge of men who have 20 to 30 years experience. [The research is to] kind of to try to help to bridge that gap,” Butler said.
The results will be compiled by Dawn DeTienne, assistant professor of business, and her students.
“When the academic book is given out in the credits, it will say USU Detachment 860 and then it will have Dr. DeTienne and Captain Lovewell’s names attached to that book,” Butler said.
This is the first time that anyone in the nation has done this kind of a study.
“We’ve always known that we needed to know this, but they’ve never given it to the cadets. It’s always been in the past you don’t get your NCO perspective until you’ve commissioned and you’re out there with them,” he added.
The cadets conducted the interviews and asked the senior NCOs the first thing they would tell a new lieutenant.
Most of them said keep the lines of communication open and that lieutenants needed to have integrity, Kennedy said.
“The thing that we learned the most was communication,” Butler said. “Communication lines are very important.”
There are different levels of responsibility and different levels of expectations, said Kennedy.
“I feel like this interview for me at least and probably for other cadets helps disintegrate that line that separates the two sides,” Kennedy said.
“When we come in as first lieutenants we need to communicate, get to know our senior NCOs. They have the experience and we need to tap that resource.”
Members say ROTC is more than just military training. It teaches the cadets to be better leaders in the nation.
“The mission is to build better citizens for America,” Kennedy said. “ROTC is practically some of the best leadership that you can receive.”
-ranaebang@cc.usu.edu