ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES ARMY

The winner of the 2021 Lt. Gen. Theodore G. Stroup Jr. Achievement Award is Alanis Hilario Serrano, a student at the University of Puerto Rico, the Association of the U.S. Army has announced.

Named for Stroup, a former AUSA vice president of education who is now an AUSA senior fellow, the program recognizes JROTC cadets for their achievements. It also aims to “engage the next generation of Soldiers and DoD stakeholders at a young age” and “promote their growth into mature members of the defense community,” according to AUSA. 

The military’s newest officers will play a key role in the “fundamental change” underway across DoD, according to the Pentagon’s top general.

“I am extraordinarily humbled just to be here to witness the future of our military,” Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said May 5 during Howard University’s ROTC joint commissioning ceremony.

The fundamentals of effective leadership for the Army’s youngest officers are the same as they have always been, and it begins with taking care of soldiers, the service’s top personnel officer said. 

In a year marked by strife and a pandemic that restricted activities within the Army’s cadet corps, leaders at the service’s three commissioning institutions say they’ve worked to imbue future leaders with a sense of urgency and cultural sensitivity as they transform from civilians into Army officers.

Cadet Summer Training, the Army’s largest annual training event, will not take place this summer at Fort Knox, Kentucky, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, officials announced.

Instead, much of the training will be delayed until the fall semester, and the Army will conduct a “distributed execution” of the training on various university campuses across the country, according to a statement from Army Cadet Command. 

Eight ROTC units were selected from among hundreds of schools nationwide to receive the General Douglas MacArthur Award for standing out as the top programs in the country, the U.S. Army Cadet Command announced.

Presented by Cadet Command and the Gen. Douglas MacArthur Foundation since 1989, the prestigious award recognizes the ideals of “duty, honor and country” as advocated by MacArthur.

The Army has seen an increase in women applying to and being accepted by the U.S. Military Academy and ROTC programs, something the Army’s personnel chief credits to success in gender integration.

Lt. Gen. Thomas Seamands, deputy Army chief of staff for personnel, told a House committee that having women graduate from Ranger School, become infantry company commanders and take on other new assignments has helped recruit more women into the Army.