UW-Milwaukee has stepped up efforts to recruit students into the ROTC program. ROTC is the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. It helps train students to be officers within the U.S. military, in exchange for free college tuition and scholarships. The offer is apparently increasingly popular during the current recession.
WUWM’s Marti Mikkelson stopped by the university to see the program in action. She found it involves lab work, classroom study and physical exercise, all on top of regular academics.
It’s seven o’clock on a weekday morning at the Klotsche Center at UW-Milwaukee. In the gymnasium, a small group of ROTC students has started its day earlier than most, with a morning workout. The four young men have formed a circle and are doing side straddle hops, or what civilians call, jumping jacks.
Matt Scheel leads the exercise. The 26-year-old engineering major is spending his second year in the program. Unlike most students, Scheel is already a sergeant in the National Guard. He says he joined ROTC at UWM after his deployment in Iraq.
“I did mostly supply with an infantry battalion. We did mostly convoys and presence patrol types of situations,” Scheel says.
Scheel comes from a military family, and says he enlisted at age 18 because he didn’t know what else he wanted to do. He says the ROTC program will provide him with training to become a full-time military officer.
Another student with military blood is Jared Smetana, a 19-year-old freshman studying criminal justice at UWM. Smetana’s cousin convinced him to enroll in ROTC.
“It’s four years and you’re working hard the whole way. It’s pretty tough. You’ve got to put your mind and everything into it,” Smetana says.
Smetana says the hard work is worth the free tuition and the monthly stipend the military provides the recruits. He first heard of UWM’s ROTC program last April.
That’s when the university started to increase its outreach, according to Lt. Col. Jim Miller. He’s the students’ adviser. Miller says interest in the program had been declining over the years.
“One time you’ll get a class of maybe ten that’ll come in and then the next year it’ll be six or seven that come through,” Miller says.
Miller says this year’s class consists of 25 students; half attend UW-Milwaukee while the rest are studying at Marquette University. He attributes the rise in enrollment to a national recruiter who came to town, and an advertising campaign that includes signs on Milwaukee buses.
“A lot of it had to probably do with more of an effort that’s been put on by the Army ROTC across the United States and also by the National Guard. They’re continuing to make the military options available to people and let them know about it,” Miller says.
Miller predicts there will be a surge in ROTC enrollment within the next year or two, largely because of the sluggish economy. He says the lure of free tuition and allowances of up to $500 per month will be too hard to pass up.
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