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This study reports on an investigation to determine the applicability of the peer rating technique to Air Force ROTC cadets at North Texas State College which has an enrollment of approximately 7000 students. The specific problem investigated was whether or not the peer rating would be useful in solving the leader identification problem in Air Force ROTC.

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The U.S. Selective Service System currently excludes women from the talent pool based upon the DoD's 1981 ban on women in direct combat. The DoD has removed the exclusion and has implemented a gender-neutral policy standard for assignments. However, there appears to be a misalignment of national security policy as it relates to gender fairness that impacts Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) participants in particular. Using Durkheim's functionalism theory as the theoretical foundation, the purpose of this phenomenological study was to examine institutional differences in policies regarding justice and gender among ROTC participants who are between 18 and 26 years of age in a Middle Atlantic University. Data were acquired through 10 interviews with ROTC members. These data were inductively coded and then subjected to Moustakas and Van Kaam's thematic analysis procedure. Key results included evidence that current policy is misaligned with gender enfranchisement, effective social change requires inclusion of both genders in registration, and a standards-based approach to equality is important to both men and women. This group of future military leaders wants the repeal of male only registration and the inclusion of female citizens as an expression of full citizenship and increased social equity. Further research using this methodological framework in different geographical regions and among different generations could add depth to the current body of knowledge. The implications for positive social change with new Selective Service registration policy would change the process towards registering all young adult citizens in the event of a national emergency which would be the codification of fairness and value for all citizens in public policy.

African American, male, veteran (AAMV) students are not completing their degrees at a local community college. The purpose of this qualitative research study was to examine veteran student perspectives regarding factors that influence community college completion to better understand their unique needs as veteran students. The conceptual framework was Bean and Metzner's model of nontraditional student attrition. The Schlossberg situation, self, support, and strategies transition model served as a foundation to examine each veteran student's personal experience of navigating available community college services to reach their educational goals. Data were collected from interviews with 10 AAMV students. Interview transcripts were coded, and an inductive data analysis was used to develop the study findings and identify emerging themes. The findings highlight veteran student service progress, identify challenges, and make recommendations for an overview of the key results of the data analysis. The project was an executive summary that addresses the experience of AAMV community college students who are not completing their degrees based on the data analysis of the research. The findings of this study may influence social change by helping veterans have a better understanding of resources and support that are needed to assist them in completing their community college degree. The results also provide information that may assist academic leaders in identifying ways to support AAMV students successfully complete their community college degrees.

The Department of the Military Science at Utah State University was created in 1898 and is the oldest department at USU. Until the mid-1950s it was mandatory that all male students be enrolled in Military training at the school and, if they so decided, would finish up the last two years of military training to become officers in the United States Military. This program is known as ROTC. Fully implemented at USU in 1916 the ROTC program continued to grow and would help fund the growth of campus during the 1920’s and 30’s. Following World War II the program became the largest ROTC unit in the nation and was nicknamed “West Point of the West”. The school produced more officers than any other college besides the Military Academy at West Point. The documentary film that I made follows the history of Utah State University from its founding in 1888 to the modern day research University of today. Using interviews of past and current ROTC cadets as well as the experts on the history of USU and ROTC, the film weaves the history of the expansion of the USU campus and the role that the Army ROTC unit had in the school’s development. Much of my research was done in special collections at the USU library where many of the photos for the film were found. Some of my research took me to the National Archives and the Library of Congress which proved to be invaluable when finding early military photos and documents. A total budget cost of USD$10,000 was spent on camera gear, travel expenses, drone footage, and digital storage solutions. The film was fully funded, written, shot, edited, and finished by myself and took 1 ½ years to make from start to finish. The end result is a 53-minute documentary delivered on a Blu Ray disk, the film is also accessible to the public via online streaming.

The Armed Forces of the United States and specifically the U.S. Army seek to have a racial/ethnic mix of officers (leaders) who match the racial/ethnic mix of the soldiers they lead and the country they defend. Currently Hispanic Americans are under-represented in the officer corps especially at senior levels. Social network theory was used to facilitate understanding a potential officer candidate's network of alters (people they interact with) and their relationships when they are seeking to make decisions related to enrolling in college and Army ROTC. When making the decision to enroll in Army ROTC, there is a complex social network of multiple alters who influence those decisions. This study identified those actors and defined the types of relational embeddedness (social relationships which demonstrate dyadic interaction, personal relationships and/or social capital) each role had in their relationship with the ego resulting in influencing their decisions to enroll in college and Army ROTC. This qualitative research engaged Hispanic American cadets enrolled in Army ROTC at four universities and compared them to a representative group of non-Hispanic American cadets using UCINet and NVIVO software. The findings provide insight about the Hispanic American cadets' social network of influence and the level of relational embeddedness which defined the relationships. The findings indicate the need for those who seek out the best candidates (recruiters) to educate the members of a candidate's social network about the opportunities for future officers and the process to access college education and leader development training through programs like Army ROTC. Some alters have greater relational embeddedness and could provide greater positive influence on identifying the best candidates for officer accessions programs, but few members of the network have actual experience in ROTC, as officers, or in any capacity in the Armed Forces, making it difficult for them to provide informed guidance unless they are educated by people knowledgeable about the military. The greatest application of this research is that it will assist Professors of Military Science and others tasked to find and recruit Hispanic American cadets as future officers who beyond the actual candidate they should be engaging to influence the best quality and an increase in quality of officer candidates. The research is also potentially powerful for other organizations seeking to better understand decision making by young people and their social networks of influence which impact those decisions.

This research measures the change in Army ROTC cadets' tactical performance when up to 75% of their tactical live training is replaced with training done on a computer. An ROTC instructor from any of the 270 programs across the nation can take this research and implement a training plan utilizing a relatively cheap off the shelf computer game and save their program: cadet and cadre time, training dollars, and transportation/equipment/training area resources, while seeing no degradation in their cadets' performance. Little research has been done on the effect of replacing live simulation with virtual simulation. With this in mind, six groups of individuals were run through the experiment for over five months at various levels of virtual/live training and scored across 16 leadership skills. These results were then formulated into a guideline defining how much training should be virtual training and how much live, to optimize an individual's performance.