MIT Army ROTC’s Annual Orientation, the Paul Revere Challenge. Photo: Yan Agudelo

This fall, MIT Army ROTC proudly welcomed the program’s largest first year cohort in years. Our cadets planned the program’s orientation weekend to introduce the first year students to the Army, ROTC, and MIT as a whole. Known as the Paul Revere Challenge, the orientation consisted of administrative tasks, military customs, courtesies, drill and ceremony, team building, and an eight-mile competition across MIT’s campus and Boston. The cadets quickly transitioned focus to the fall training exercise, introducing first years to Army training operations while providing upper-level cadets an opportunity to train on more advanced Army techniques. The faculty built upon the field lessons with classes and labs geared toward developing technical proficiency and leadership qualities across all cohorts.

As part of our mission to provide world-class leadership development training and education to our cadets, MIT Army ROTC has also been active in the community this fall. We partnered with the MIT Football Team to host a leader development camp to increase accountability and a shared understanding of team values and goals. The faculty also leveraged army officers pursuing graduate studies at MIT, Harvard, and Tufts to individually mentor cadets in order to augment the their personal and professional development. Lastly, our cadets teamed with MIT’s Violence Prevention Team (VPT) to plan an interactive and engaging lab dedicated to sexual harassment and assault response and prevention (SHARP). Cadets were introduced to available Army and school-specific resources, as well as ROTC and Army based vignettes designed to develop proactive and reactive skills necessary to prevent and respond to SHARP incidents.

If you are interested in learning more about our program, follow MIT Army ROTC on Facebook @PaulRevereBattalion, on Instagram @mitarmyrotc, and on Twitter @mitarmyrotc.

—Nadi Kassim, MIT Army ROTC