The early-spring sun has yet to rise over Lake Park on Milwaukee\u2019s east side, where a group of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee students stands at attention.<\/p>\n
The dim, gray light reveals plumes of breath hanging in front of their faces before drifting into the surrounding fog. Caitlin Fielding\u2019s puffs mingle with those of her fellow ROTC cadets, who are here for Friday-morning military science labs. Before they leave, they\u2019ll learn a slew of outdoor-related skills, including the prevention of hypothermia.<\/p>\n
This was the college experience Fielding had envisioned since she was a freshman at Spooner High School in northwestern Wisconsin, where she played basketball and ran cross country. And though her father served in the U.S. Army, her mother was the one who put the ROTC idea in her head.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, I love to exercise, so that kind of sold me already,\u201d says Fielding.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s worked out well. As a sophomore during the spring 2016 semester, Fielding\u00a0earned an award for most outstanding cadet in her class.<\/p>\n
But ROTC involves much more than beating the sun out of bed to exercise. Capt. Michael Imdieke, an adviser to the cadets, refers to the program as a \u201cleadership internship.\u201d The 51ÁÔÆæ program, a satellite of Marquette\u2019s Golden Eagle Battalion, prepares students to become military officers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t want robots,\u201d Imdieke says.<\/p>\n
Cadets are involved in many aspects of 51ÁÔÆæ student life, with the program boasting student athletes and student association representatives among its members. An ROTC program is sending\u00a0sophomore Wynter Novak to Kyrgyzstan and Poland in the summer. And in summer 2015, junior Vincent Paikowski completed the highly competitive Special Forces precombat diver qualification course.<\/p>\n
After a typical morning workout with her fellow cadets, Fielding walks through campus alert and invigorated, while other students trudge past her with cups of coffee and groggy eyes. In her military science class, she and other students, still sweaty from the morning\u2019s exercises, consider the ethical implications of a captured enemy.<\/p>\n
An officer may have to deal with troops who want to harm the prisoner \u2013 especially if he\u2019d just attacked\u00a0their compatriots \u2013 and could lose their support by standing firmly against it. The students weigh the various consequences, while Imdieke guides them through other facets they may not have considered.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to sit back and think about it,\u201d Fielding says. \u201cBasically what we\u2019re learning is critical thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n
And they\u2019re learning practical skills, too. At that foggy Friday-morning drill in the park, Fielding and other cadets huddled around a pile of twigs and brush. One cadet led a training exercise for building a \u201cLincoln Log\u201d fire, made by stacking twigs as if building a house with the old-school child\u2019s toy. This helps the fire oxygenate faster, and another cadet noted that the fire was redoxing, \u201cundergoing electron transfer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whether building Lincoln Log fires or extinguishing ethical ones, it\u2019s the diversity of experiences that Fielding relishes. She plays on the ROTC women\u2019s basketball team, has run in the Army Ten Miler in Washington, D.C., and has taken part in Leadership Development Exercises at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin.<\/p>\n
Her travels continue this summer, taking her all the way to Madagascar. The trip is part of ROTC\u2019s Cultural Understanding and Language Proficiency Program, and she\u2019ll work with Madagascar\u2019s military on humanitarian efforts.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s yet another proving ground for the skills she\u2019s spent so much time honing here, as she did at Lake Park. The sun finally came up and strained through the fog, shedding more light on Fielding and her fellow cadets, all huddled in a circle, working to build a fire with damp twigs and a magnesium strip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
America’s future military leaders are honing their skills at 51ÁÔÆæ to serve and protect people both near and far.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2985,"featured_media":33600,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","uwm_wg_additional_authors":[]},"categories":[174],"tags":[250],"section":[122,124],"display_categories":[115,116],"related-coverage":[178],"uwmnews-feed":[],"class_list":["post-34854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-student-success","section-campus-community","section-students","display_categories-top-story-secondary","display_categories-top-story-section","related-coverage-veterans"],"yoast_head":"\n