Army Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) enrollment at Hopkins has increased significantly over the past year, despite the national drop in average ROTC enrollments.
The Blue Jay Battalion, which includes students from satellite programs at UMBC and Stevenson University, has jumped from 48 cadets in the program last year to 85 cadets this year. This represents a 56 percent increase over the past year, though nationally ROTC enrollment has dropped an average of 16 percent from 2005-2007. Enrollment numbers for the 2008 school year were unavailable.
Two years ago the total number of cadets in the ROTC program was 60, and prior to that it was 74.
According to Bushyager, of the first-time recruits this past year, 15 of them are non-freshmen. One possible explanation for the increased enrollment, especially among non-freshmen, is the Army's recent changes to the national ROTC program itself, which has created more offerings to cadets who join the program after completing at least one year of undergraduate study. Through the new program, the Army offers these recruits a loan repayment program that will repay the cost of the student's first two years in college as well as the tuition for the two years that they spend in ROTC. Like other ROTC scholarships, this does carry with it the obligation of service after college.
The jump in enrollments, while signaling success for the program overall, does put some added pressure on class structure and on cadets in leadership positions. However, Major Steven Pomper does not believe the higher numbers will have a negative impact in the classroom.
"I have 10 students in my class right now," he said. "We can easily double that without a problem and split the class into two sections."
UMBC senior Malcolm Royer supported this opinion. "I think it's great," he said. "You have more people to work with, and they all have clean slates. Teaching them is also like a refresher course in all the basics for the juniors and seniors, but it's exciting because it's all new [to the new recruits]."
"We have a whole lot more people," junior cadet Andrew Garcia said. "In an organization this big it's harder to control everyone and make sure they know what they need to know. It's been hard on the senior class." He added that sometimes students who join their freshman year do not always choose to commit to the program afterwards, so the student leaders have a continuous focus on "retention and excellence."
Sophomore Michael Garcia also acknowledged that classes were noticeably bigger, but remained optimistic. "I don't think it'll affect [the program] in a negative way. It's just a different style."
UMBC's newly-obtained ROTC building also ensures that the program still has plenty of room to grow. According to Bushyager, "We're operating at about one fourth of our capacity right now." Bushyager predicts that the program will grow to 200 recruits over the next three years.
As national ROTC enrollment continues to drop, Bushyager attributed the current and projected growth in the Blue Jay Battalion mostly to the efforts of the cadets themselves.
"The best recruiters are students," he said. "Probably about 20 percent of the freshman who joined were referred by other students. I'd say 25 to 35 percent of the entire program were referred."
Referrals can come in the form of friends, acquaintances, teammates, and even family members.
"A lot of cadets are friends or roommates or younger brothers of other cadets," Major Heather Levy, Executive officer of the Blue Jay Battalion, pointed out.
Bushyager described another instance where "we had a varsity guy bring in seven of his [teammates] one day who he thought might be interested in the program, and it turns out six of the seven were."
Just as the cadre gave credit to the cadets for the recent increase, the cadets suggest that the cadre's influence may have contributed to the increase in enrollment.
"There's been a change in the chain of command, with a new recruitment officer [Bushyager] and military science professor [Pomper]," junior cadet Andrew Garcia explained, though sophomore cadet Michael Garcia pointed out that the new cadre have not instituted any major changes to the program.
The cadets themselves give various reasons for choosing to enroll in the program.
"I wanted to do something," sophomore cadet Michael Lee said. "Everyone does something for their country, whether it be voting or getting involved in the community. My way of doing something is to serve."
Scholarships certainly provide incentive for some, but this isn't the only motive: "I can't say I did it for the money. I did it for the experience," senior cadet Sean Ashby said.
The same was true of freshman cadet John Kelly. "Part of it was tuition, but mostly it was because I wanted to serve," he said.
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