BUSINESS SCHOOL TO INAUGURATE R.O.T.C. TRAINING FOR QUARTERMASTER CORPS

Dean Wallace B. Donham announced today that beginning in September 1941, there will be an extension of the Reserve Officers' Training Corps, senior division, to include a graduate unit training for the Quartermaster Corps in a two-year advanced course at the Business School,

Men who successfully complete the course and are accepted by the Army will be commissioned as 2nd Lieutenants in the Officers Reserve Corps.

First Time in History

This is the first time in the history of the United States that specific preparation for the Army Quartermaster Corps has been made part of R.O.T.C. training. It is a recognition by the Army of the increased importance of the supply services and the greater complexity of their tasks in modern warfare.

In announcing this new course of training. Dean Donham pointed out that "There are many similarities between military business practice and the practice of private business, and the former can be more efficiently conducted if the experience of the latter is studied. Furthermore it is recognized that there are many areas where Supply Officers and industrialists are mutually concerned, and in these areas problems can be more efficiently solved if a mutual understanding of methods and objectives exists."

School Used in 1917

This development at the Business School of additional R.O.T.C. training for Quartermaster Corps Officers is a natural outgrowth of the School's experience in working with Army and Navy during the last 24 years. The School first began training reserve officers in supply work during the World War. Since 1924 over 200 regular Army and Navy officers have been assigned to the School to take the two-year graduate course at government expense. Each year members of the Business School's Faculty have lectured before the student body of regular officers at the Army Industrial College in Washington.

In addition, after two years of intensive research with the Army Industrial College and the various Supply Arms and Services, the Business School is continuing to offer a course in Industrial Mobilization for wartime emergency.

Since 1924 regular Army officers from the following branches of the Army have been assigned to the School as students at government expense: Quartermaster Corps, Air Corps, Ordnance Department, Signal Corps, Medical Department, Chemical Warfare Service, Finance Department, Cavalry, and Infantry. Among regular Army officers on active duty who are now graduates OS the Business School are not less than one Major General, four Brigadier Generals, twelve Colonels, thirty-nine Lieutenant Colonels, twenty eight Majors, and seventeen Captains. In addition, there are over a hundred reserve officers who are graduates of the School on duty in the various Supply Arms and Services of the Army and in the office of the Secretary of War.

Applications for the advanced graduate course, senior division R.O.T.C. unit, must be college graduates who have completed the basic two-year R.O.T.C. course or its equivalent. By equivalent is meant former R.O.T.C. training in a military school or high school or some other military training considered satisfactory by the Professor of Military Science and Tactics. Applicants must be enrolled in the Harvard Business School and be candidates for the degree of Master in Business Administration. They must be under 26 years of age at the beginning of the course and must pass a physical examination. Men already holding commissions as reserve officers are not eligible to take this course.

Students who fall to pass the physical examination or whose military training is not sufficient to enroll in the R.O.T.C. course may continue as regular students in the School preparing for positions in defense industries. The demands for trained men for defense work are already son great that the School connote fill positions offered this year's graduating class.

In concluding the announcement. Dean Donham said, In order to help meet defense needs in as short a space of time as possible, the Business School in addition to R.O.T.C. training with the Master in Business Administration Degree, offers a 12 months course leading to the degree of Industrial Administrator for men wishing to enter industrial defense fields. Thus the School, in giving priority to training men for industry as well as for the Army, has become itself essentially a defense industry."