Each year, the Massachusetts Society is proud to award outstanding JROTC and ROTC cadets throughout the Commonwealth. Recipients are selected for their high degree of merit, leadership qualities, military bearing, and general excellence as recommended by their Commanding Officer. The medals endeavor to foster the principle of "citizen-soldier" exemplified by the Minutemen of the Revolutionary War, and are approved by the United States Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force. We are pleased to report on one of these events for 2011 below.

WPI preps students for military

I was fortunate to have the state commander of the 'Military Order of the Purple Heart' Leo Agoewa, former resident of Marlborough, to invite me to video tape the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) Awards ceremony March 30 at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI).

The event, comprising the two branches of the military, Army and Air Force - started with all the cadets marching into the vast hail. Then, they recognized and awarded the deserving cadets the various awards of trophies, certificates, citations, commemorative desk docks, and specialty medals. These awards were from the multitude of veterans organizations and related supporting associations.

Before being dismissed, the ceremony culminated with all the cadets standing and singing in unison the Army and Air Force songs respectfully. WOW!

After the event, when asking the students that they received from the ROTC program in a one word-answer, the replies were service ... training ... self-discipline ... leadership.

Among the people I was fortunate to interview after the ceremony was the commander/professor of Aerospace studies in the ROTC program, Lt. Col Cynthia A. Provost.

Hailing from Poughkeepsie, NY, this is her second year as the chief supervisor at Worcester Polytechnic institute (WPI). Provost graduated from the University of Notre Dame majoring in aerospace engineering. She’s served in the Air Force for 22 years.

"Air Force is the place to be for a woman or a man who would like to serve their country, join a technical career field or even be a nurse ... or (have) a foreign language skill," she said. "We need everybody and it’s a great place for a woman to be."

Presenter of the Sons of the American Revolution was Verne L Thayer of Milford.

He explained after presenting the award to Army ROTC Cadet Chaplin Evans, "to be eligible, a cadet must demonstrate outstanding leadership qualities, military bearing, and all-around excellence in ROTC studies and activities."

Andrea Weiss is a student cadet graduating this month "I picked the Air Force because it had great opportunities to travel and allowed me to pursue my graduate education and proceed further in a clinical psychology doctorate degree."

Sophomore Sean Gile, in the Army’s ROTC program, will attend the basic officer field training four-week program this summer in Alabama and Mississippi. "When laws about 3 years old, I went to an Air Force base and saw F4s and F-16s flying " and said, "That’s what I want to do." Gile is a WPl student who plans to apply to be an Air Force pilot next year.

The lead officer in charge of the Army ROTC program at WPI is professor of military science, Lt. Col. Carl W. Cowen. He is serving in his 23rd year in the military, graduating from the ROTC program at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania.

He said there is an eight-year obligation to the military. It can be accomplished by a combination of performing in the active ‘duty stains, or in the reserve or the National Guard. The candidates usually learn of the ROTC program mainly through word of mouth by prior candidates. The rank of captain is the usual position a cadet will attain by the end of the commitment

Qualified students from WPI may participate in one the four Armed Service Commissioning programs sponsored by WPI: Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. Each of these four programs offers various scholarships to qualified applicants. The Army and Air Force programs are hosted by WPI and are open to students from the consortium schools The Navy and Marine programs are hosted by Holy Cross and are open to WPI students as well as other schools in the consortium.