As a rising junior at the University of Louisville, Gary Harber applied for an overseas internship through his college’s ROTC program.
What he got was an invitation from the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation to train for four weeks at Fort Benning.
Harber was one of 20 U.S. students selected from 19 colleges and universities nationwide to participate in a leadership course that brings together U.S. and Colombian cadets for the purposes of enhancing cultural awareness, improving language skills and building future military leaders.
WHINSEC’s Cadet Leadership Development Course is taught entirely in Spanish, a language Harber doesn’t speak fluently.
Even so, the 20-year-old Tennessee native is thriving, having just entered his third week of training.
Despite the language barrier, or perhaps because of the challenge it has posed, Harber said he has benefitted tremendously from this military and cultural experience.
“This course has been much more beneficial than the overseas internship I could have received,” Harber said. “There’s so much training. Seriously, we’re meeting the top cadets in Colombia. These are life-long friends, and it’s just been a blast.”
Course director Capt. Brad Miller said the goal is to integrate the students, encouraging them to establish relationships with members of a partner nation and improve cultural sensitivity and understanding.
For U.S. participants, it is a “domestic cultural immersion,” Miller said.
In other words, future soldiers such as Harber reap the benefits of training and living with Colombians cadets, including Jaime Antonio Lopez Echeverri, without leaving the country.
Echeverri ranks first in his class of 425 students at Gen. Jose Maria Cordova Military School in Colombia. His high achievement earned him enrollment in the cadet leadership course at Fort Benning, along with 39 of his peers and five Colombian police lieutenants.
In addition to the hands-on training and lectures, Echeverri praised the immersion aspect of the course and is confident he will walk away from this experience with life-long friendships. The 23-year-old said he already has made friends with many of his American peers on the social networking site Facebook.
“The course has seemed excellent so far,” Echeverri said through an interpreter. “They’ve helped develop us into leaders. It’s been an appropriately managed course.”
Instructors hail from 20 or more nations. Many bring with them expertise honed while serving in elite special forces units in countries such as Brazil, Ecuador and Guatemala.
“They (the students) receive their instruction and training at the hands of extremely qualified and highly skilled foreign guest instructors,” Miller said.
One instructor, Sgt. Francisco Mendez, said he has seen these young men and women grow from shy cadets into young leaders in a few weeks. And, while communicating is difficult at times, it no longer is approached as an obstacle but an opportunity to learn.
Classroom lessons focus on human rights, ethics, leadership theory and anti-corruption. Cadets also tackle exercises such as combatives, obstacle courses and weapons familiarization. Each activity is designed to encourage team building and develop individual leadership skills. All cadets will, at some point during the course, command their peers during one or more exercises.
“Daily, we change the leadership,” Mendez said. “That way, they don’t get comfortable.”
Miller said the value of this integration likely won’t be seen until these cadets mature into military leaders — leaders who hopefully have carried with them throughout their careers the lessons learned and friendships forged during their time at Fort Benning.
The course ends June 26. U.S. cadets will complete their summer training by earning their Airborne Wings.
E-Mail
Print
@Nyx.CommentBody@