NU admissions looks to JROTC units for potential students

By Joshua Turman
Norwich Guidon Staff Writer

In the last few years Norwich University has undertaken a recruitment program to contact Junior Reserved Officer Training Corps (JROTC) units and students to increase enrollment in the school.

One part of the recruiting program is recruiting from JROTC units. "The JROTC program is part of our recruiting program to focus on those organizations that provide a good core of students that might want to consider a Norwich education," said Colonel Stephen D. MacArthur, Norwich University Director of Recruitment.

Originally the program consisted of contacting JROTC units located in the northeastern region in the US, followed by people from the university making high school visits. Currently, the program reaches JROTC units all over the world; Japan, the Philippines, Korea, Italy, and Germany are just a few.

A Corps of Cadets recruitment staff was formed in the 1998-99 school year. The staff consisted of company recruiters assigned to each company who would try to get cadets within their companies to return to their high schools and recruit for Norwich.

Andrew Mason, 19, a business management major from Pembroke, Mass., and corps recruiter for Charlie Company, said: "I try to persuade (cadets) to go back and recruit at their old high schools and JROTC units during break."

Skip Davison, Director of Corps of Cadets recruitment at Norwich, said that by going out and recruiting, Norwich is able to create and build an inquiry pool. This allows recruiters to find out whether people from these inquiry cards are really interested.

"This year, I have close to 350 cadets and students signed up to visit around 400 high schools," Davison said. "It gets the Norwich name out there, and hopefully will result in future enrollments for the university and the corps.

The JROTC aspect of the recruitment program started with about 35-40 JROTC units. Davison gathered JROTC unit addresses off the Internet, and he currently has a list of almost 3,000 units. The university mails JROTC units packets yearly in hope of getting inquiry cards.

"We know that 30 percent of the freshman class this year participated in JROTC units," Davison said, "A six percent increase in the past three years. Once we started sending out packets, we received a resounding response from units all over the world."

Jeffrey Sacks, 19, a political science major from Columbia, Maryland, was in a JROTC unit that received a packet containing information about the Corps of Cadets, classes and academics. "The packet had a lot of information and a list of majors," Sacks said, "[Norwich] had my major."

MacArthur further commented on the JROTC program, saying, "Anytime you focus on a group that provides the university the ability to communicate with students then it can be great for the university."

Davison hopes the recruitment program will continue to thrive and provide Norwich with new students.

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