CULP Notifications!!

Well.......My son's HR person had the CULP assignment a bit off.

Son just received official word from Cadet Command. Son will not be going to Slovakia.

Son's official destination is now Bosnia, Military to Military, he is very excited.

That's very exciting!

My son had also hoped for Military to Military though he hadn't put down any preferences. He is doing the English teaching.

As he just started on his 2nd semester of Arabic today and it's 5 days per week again, he should know a bit more Arabic prior to going in May to Tunisia.
 
I just found out I will be going to Togo this summer as part of a Cadet English Training team and Im real pumped. Does anyone really know what this consists of? I was hoping to go military to military. Will I just be in a classroom all month?
 
I just found out I will be going to Togo this summer as part of a Cadet English Training team and Im real pumped. Does anyone really know what this consists of? I was hoping to go military to military. Will I just be in a classroom all month?

Congrats on getting selected.
 
Am just curious.

Does anyone know how they decide who is selected and going where to do what?

Obviously, they are not letting loose a monkey to come and do a random drawing.....

Given how short the application was this year, the fact that the applicant was required to give very little information, the PMS had the job of giving the recommendation and fill in all the blanks.

I think the selection process is more of a mystery then even the scholarship process, the loose monkey may not be that strange of an idea. I would imagine they have a large pool of missions to fill, how they fill them is anybodys guess. From what I've seen there are fewer Mil to Mil slots then Humanitarian and English Training, that's just a guess though.

My son and the other cadet that applied from his school both requested Mil to Mil, the other cadet received Korea with a Humanitarian Mission, he is a MS2 and went to Costa Rica on a Humanitarian Mission last year, my son received Bosnia Mil to Mil, he has no idea how the selection was made.
 
My son was a bit disappointed that he did not get the mil to mil program.

I, on the other hand, think his assignment could actually a very interesting one. Not the actual task it self, maybe. But the kind of people that will be on the receiving end of that service (English partner). Especially in a very different society and culture (in my son's case: Cambodia) with some very traumatic history in a recent past.

Places like Cambodia do not have US military presence. I wonder where the services will be rendered, and who will be sponsoring it. Will the US embassy be involved?

It would be great after the summer if we, the parents and the cadets themselves, share the experience so that this whole CULP thing gets a bit demystified for the benefit of future participants.
 
My son was a bit disappointed that he did not get the mil to mil program.

I, on the other hand, think his assignment could actually a very interesting one. Not the actual task it self, maybe. But the kind of people that will be on the receiving end of that service (English partner). Especially in a very different society and culture (in my son's case: Cambodia) with some very traumatic history in a recent past.

Places like Cambodia do not have US military presence. I wonder where the services will be rendered, and who will be sponsoring it. Will the US embassy be involved?

It would be great after the summer if we, the parents and the cadets themselves, share the experience so that this whole CULP thing gets a bit demystified for the benefit of future participants.

educateme,
I nominate you to start that thread at the appropriate time. :biggrin: It would indeed be both interesting and educational.
 
My son (MSI) just found out he was selected for CULP: Taiwan M2M Team 1. He will be going to Tapei in July.
 
Cadet Delahanty informs us that he has been selected for a CULP mission this summer. Because we offered to visit him there, he has respectfully declined to disclose the country though he did indicate it is on the continent of Africa.

He had been anticipating it would be the European nation of Ruritania particularly since he would have been able to demonstrate his middling command of Esperanto. However, Ruritania has been dropped from the program following last summer's instability. Apparently the government was so destitute it decided it would no longer provide buttons for its officer's uniforms. Following the ensuing sickout involving the entire officer corps, the country's Prezidanto declared that the American captain leading the ROTC mission was the highest ranking active officer in the land, as well as the only one with a presentable uniform. Therefore Captain _ would be the new kommandoro-in-chief. This situation could have provoked an international incident and the captain prudently demurred.
 
The good news....daughter was chosen for a CULP mission in the Ukraine.

The bad news....she has an on-going medical 'minor' issue with her knee and will probably not be able to go so that she can get her knee taken care of.

The good news, part II....she had already been offered a full-time, PAID internship with a local pharmacuetical company for the summer.

Congrats to all those who were chosen and enjoy your assignments!! :thumb:
 
Also switched from Slovakia to Bosnia when I received official email from Cadet Command. Also very excited!
 
Just a short CULP Update.

Having a Cadre change can be interesting at a battalion. The new Cadre, PMS and a Capt. XO new this year, are great and the cadets love them, but even as good as they are it takes time to get up to speed.

As everyone knows the CULP notifications came out late, nowhere near the Dec. 15th date they had listed. My son received his notification on Jan. 8th.

The first order of business was the Passport, the Capt. asked if the cadets had one or if they would need to get one. My son told them he had a current Passport and that was the end of it, if they needed a Passport they were to have applied by Jan. 27 per the Cadre. Yesterday the new Capt. discovered that the Passport needed to be the No Fee "Red" Passport and a Tourist Passport would not work, that did not leave much time to get things in order.

Of course he needed his Birth Certificate which of course is at our house, ever tried Fed Ex to a Frat House, not a pretty sight. By great luck he received it. Then came filling out the forms, the Cadre was new to this as well so they all went through the instructions together. My son sent me a copy of the instructions and the form he filled out, we went over it together to make sure all the I's and T's were correct. We noticed that there was a box to fill out if you have a current passport, he checked yes and the only options were Lost, Stoled, Expired, Sending with application, he checked the only one he thought was correct which was Sending with application. Well....of course his current Passport was in our drawer at home, Oh Joy, more Fed Ex we thought. I decided to call the local Post Office/Passport Agent this morning just to check and see if he really needed to send the Passport with the application. His university is in a small town with only one Passport Agent. The agent did not know the answer and told us to call the State Dept directly. During my conversation with the local agent she asked if he had an appointment, I relpied Appointment??, apparently this Agent requires one, I said Uh...No. She tells me she has only one appt. open for the week, I made it on the spot, he got the last one...Whew, he would have shown up with paperwork in hand and been out of luck.

I called the State Dept. the woman apologized and said it was a mistake they made on the Wizard Page for filling out the form that they didn't put a box for "Passport not in my possesion", so she tells me to have my son just scratch out the check mark and hand write "Passport not in my Possesion" and that would be fine.

So, it looks like he now has everything together, he did say it was funny in the office when they were filling out the DD1056, he, the Lt. Col. and the Capt.. were all at the desk flipping through the instructions trying to fill out the form.

Now he just needs to compete the SERE training and he can rest for a while.

While there has been great discussion on not being a Helicopter Parent, it's a good idea to keep the engine running. There will be times during the 4 years of ROTC that you will need to kick those rotors into high gear.

I hope everyone else is having a smooth CULP process so far, son is very excited and looking forward to the trip.

I am curious about one thing, if your son is going to be a Helicopter Pilot does that by default make you a Helicopter Parent
 
Legitimate for sure

Just a short CULP Update

I am curious about one thing, if your son is going to be a Helicopter Pilot does that by default make you a Helicopter Parent

This may be the funniest thing I've ever read in this forum, especially since I work at a university where those rotors can be really active.
 
While there has been great discussion on not being a Helicopter Parent, it's a good idea to keep the engine running. There will be times during the 4 years of ROTC that you will need to kick those rotors into high gear.... <snip>

I am curious about one thing, if your son is going to be a Helicopter Pilot does that by default make you a Helicopter Parent

Great story Jcleppe. What a beaurocratic nightmare! I agree we need to at least warm up the engine every once in a while so it's ready when needed.

In answer to your last question I believe the answer is yes; and according to scoutpilot that also makes you a hero to fighter pilots and astronauts! :biggrin:
 
Jclepe,
My DS (selected for CULP-Tawain) took his passport back to school with him after winter break as he is planning out of country travel for his spring break. Your story explains why he sent me the following email earlier in the week.

"hey mom just wanted to say thanks for letting me get my passport, because i now need to get it revised or something for Taiwan and its good i have it up here."

I had no idea what he was talking about...thanks for the explanation!
 
Jcleppe,

Ha! I am going to do one up on you in the bureaucratic nightmare department.

My husband and I are both first generation immigrant. He has relatives in three continents, and he have been to 50+ countries.

During the application process, he was supposed to supply ALL the dates of departure from USA, entries into other countries (and which country), and re-entry into USA for last five years. There were many trips when we covered 4-5 countries at a time. Now, we never kept an exel spreadsheet on this. The only way to "recreate" this in a chronological order was to look at his two passports, and examine every single entry/exit seal from all the governments involved in his trips last few years. Now, those of you who travel a lot, you know that custom agents do NOT fill passport page carefully one page at a time. They put their stamp on WHICHEVER page that happens to open conveniently for them. So you have to examine every single seal, compare the country, and date scattered all over the passport. Sometimes they put the stamp on top of older stamps since his passport pages were running out of space. His passports were at home when he had to supply this info. I decided to do him a favor. Rather than just sending him the passports (expired and new), I spent a day on a weekend to stitch it all together, and send the spreadsheet. What a nightmare. It was the only time I assisted him throughout the paper work process.

Then, he had to go through a security clearance. AND, the biggest item that immediately lights up on their radar scan is CONTACTS WITH FOREIGN NATIONALS. Both my husband and I are naturalized, but are we foreign nationals too based on the place of birth? Any way, his entire family from both sides are foreign nationals. What do ya know? It took forever for him to get the security clearance! He told me he had to answer an endless medley of questions regarding when and where you met these unsavory characters, the status of relationships now. the last contact. Phone calls? Email? Face to face? And, a real kicker! Especially worrisome are the foreign nationals who were in the past or currently related to their government. My father was a general, a governor of a state, and a government minister. My husband was a fighter pilot in his original home country air force. Oy, vey!

After all this, he joked that there is this really cute girl on his form floor, but he suspects she may have been born in a foreign country, and he dares not strike a conversation lest it registers as yet another CONTACT WITH A FOREIGN NATIONAL. His aunt and uncle are visiting this spring while he is on a spring break, and he think we should build a Chinese wall around the guest bedroom.

Ditto with the rest of the story about birth certificates, passports, etc. Poor kid, the amount of paperwork he had to do during last 5 since started on the program qualifies for a full semester course in government affairs! I do say though, it's part of the growing up and learning process. I applaud him for methodically going through all this, but I know it was a ton of work on his part.

So, if you have a youngster with a plan for CULP or whatever related to the government security clearance, raise him/her like Rapunzel: lock him/her up in a tower and kick off the ladder.
 
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