At the spring Military Excellence Competition (MEC) at Villanova University, the largest military competition in the Northeast, Penn State’s Naval ROTC beat 23 other programs, including the United States Naval Academy, to place first overall for athletics. Penn State students also took home more than 40 first-place medals in areas such as drill competition, track and field events and swimming.
Penn State’s Air Force ROTC Honor Guard drill team also took home first place among 11 teams at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) drill competition this spring. RPI is one of a few similar competitions across the U.S. and the only drill meet in the Northeast.
Last fall, the Army ROTC’s Ranger Challenge team won its fourth straight title at the 2nd Brigade Ranger Challenge Competition, a regional qualifier among 43 ROTC units in the Northeast. This earned the team the right to compete in the 2014 International Sandhurst Military Stakes Competition held at West Point. Penn State earned 10th place overall and second place among ROTC teams at the competition, which featured 36 West Point teams, teams from the other service academies and international military academies from Great Britain, Canada, Australia, China and 10 other nations. In 2013, Penn State’s team earned second place overall, which is the highest placement for any ROTC program in the competition’s history.
These high rankings earn the students more than just bragging rights — they also are an indicator for what’s to come in their future careers. Once students enter the ROTC, they begin competing nationally against other ROTC students in their designated military branch for commissioning assignments upon completion of their degrees. Upon graduation, Air Force and Army ROTC graduates are commissioned as second lieutenants, and Naval ROTC graduates are commissioned as ensigns in the Navy or second lieutenants in the Marine Corps.
Penn State "students first"
All three ROTC branches have a shared philosophy that the Penn State student experience takes precedence, and ROTC students can get involved in campus life outside of the ROTC, too. With more than 1,000 student organizations at the University Park campus alone, involvement opportunities seem endless.
“It’s very well-balanced,” said Midshipman Alex Robertson, a Penn State sophomore. “When we’re not wearing the uniform, we know how to be normal college students as well. You can be in the military environment and act accordingly, but you can also be in your residency hall or your apartment and just be a normal college kid.”
Students in ROTC make up a small percentage of the University Park population, but their presence is seen on campus each week when students wear their uniforms — Air Force on Tuesdays and Army and Navy on Thursdays, but many also can be seen outside of their designated military programs.
“I think a big misconception to identify is that it’s all Army all the time,” said Dave Rizzo, scholarship and enrollment officer with Penn State Army ROTC. “We allow them to be students first.”
ROTC students get involved in many campus clubs and organizations, and the ROTC cadre works to make that happen. Students involved in club and varsity sports, for example, can be excused from the physical training aspect of their ROTC program since they’re already working out.
“Our goal is to get these cadets where they want to be,” Rizzo said.