The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has affected Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) programs at higher ed institutions across the country in unique ways. Some ROTC cadets training to be officers in the U.S. armed forces have had to train while donning masks, and other cadets have had to move intense, high-contact training to Zoom in an effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
But Norwich University, the oldest private military college in the U.S., got creative.
About five months prior to the fall semester, Col. Matt Smith, dean of the College of National Services and professor of aerospace studies at Norwich, was asking, “What are those objectives that we must do?”
His answer: continue training to stay on track with student academic success and programming, with safety as a priority.
One of the ways to do that amid the health emergency over the summer, explained Smith, was to conduct training locally in Vermont.
“COVID-19 rates in Vermont are actually some of the lowest in the country,” said Smith. “So instead of exposing cadets with unnecessary risks by sending them to Georgia and other places, we were able to train them in the local area, which saves time, money and resources.”
Restructuring formalized officer training for cadets in summer programs gave ROTC leadership an inside look at how such a restructure would work for the entire student body in the fall. Being indoors with roughly over 700 cadets total would not be safe given COVID-19.
