FORT BENNING, Ga., (Jan. 21, 2015) -- The Infantry School took a closer look at some of its incoming facilitators and instructors Jan. 15, as it held its first Facilitator Leader Assessment Program.

Five incoming Soldiers were put through an evaluation that included an Army Physical Fitness Test, an urban orienteering event that consisted of four stations on Main Post with different tests for various Soldier skills and an interview with Infantry School leadership.

Master Sgt. Gregg Smith, the Infantry School operations sergeant, said the event will enable the Infantry School to ensure that incoming facilitators are being used in appropriate roles.

"This program is designed to be able to take a Soldier who is selected to come to the Infantry School and place them in a position that best capitalizes on their skill set and their experiences so that we can transfer that information to the upcoming force and develop the force better," Smith said. "Our instructors are our face. They are the ones who have the direct impact on the students coming through the courses and the future leaders coming through Fort Benning. Those instructors who serve as facilitators need to be a role model and look like an instructor, but they also need to have the right mindset and skill set to develop those Soldiers coming through. This program will help us to employ them better in order to maximize Infantry

training and development."

The results of the assessment could help the Infantry School to ensure that incoming facilitators are sent to organizations where they can make the greatest impact.

The stations during the urban orienteering portion included weapons assembly, medical treatment of a simulated casualty, map reading and communications skills.

"Every Infantryman coming in should have had some knowledge of these skills," Smith said. "We were just trying to gauge what knowledge they had and what they could remember while looking to see if they got frustrated during the task."

Staff Sgt. Anthony Isley of 2nd Battalion, 54th Infantry Regiment, 198th Infantry Brigade, was one of the NCOs in charge of the weapons station.

"This is a very important skill because this is one of the skillsets that you're going to be training your Soldiers on," Isley said. "If they know the skill, it can make their Soldiers better on the battlefield and produce a more combat-ready environment."

During the interview portion of the assessment, Soldiers were also asked to teach an impromptu class on a randomly selected subject with just five minutes of preparation.

Soldiers were unaware they would have to teach a class, just as they were unaware what the orienteering stations would entail. Smith said this unknown nature of the event enabled the Infantry School to evaluate some of the Soldiers' intangibles.

"We're looking for things like confidence and communication skills," he said. "We also want to evaluate their agility, critical thinking and problem solving. How do they interact with others - do they have a collaborative or team mentality? Does their image personify someone that is going to lead by example?"

The program is based on a similar program operated by the Armor School, and Smith said the Infantry School will combine the Armor School's lessons learned with feedback from the first Infantry iteration of the program to refine the program for future events.

"Our partners at the Armor School have been doing this program longer than us, so we tried to take what they learned and what they went through and apply those lessons learned," he said. "I'll also get more after-action reviews from the candidates who came through this program so we can continue to improve our product and make it as useful as possible."