SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Illinois (09 May 2017) -- Army Reserve Soldiers from the Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command's Deployment Support Command (DSC) recently travelled from home bases throughout the country to attend a five-day Centric Systems Academy in Charleston, S.C.

"This academy was designed to teach and qualify Soldiers -- especially Soldiers new to the Army and the transportation career field -- in new systems equipment and software," said Command Sgt. Maj. Michelle Session, the DSC's Reserve Affairs liaison to SDDC.

A total of 20 Soldiers, along with three instructors, participated in the training.

The academy was created as part of the U.S. Army's Readiness Guidance for calendar year 2017 and allows the DSC to initiate their training plan for the sustainable readiness model.

The training focused on three main systems: TC-AIMS II, GATES, and ICODES. The Transportation Coordinators' - Automated Information for Movements System II (TC-AIMS II) is used in to create, maintain, manage, and update unit equipment, personnel, and deployment information. The Global Air Transportation Execution System (GATES) is a single port management system for aerial and surface port operations. Finally, the Integrated Computerized Deployment System (ICODES) provides multi-modal load planning capabilities to the Department of Defense.

Session noted that the training was very important for those DSC Soldiers that will be deploying or participating in exercises where the skills to operate these systems are required.

A secondary goal of the academy included training Soldiers to become future systems instructors and subject matter experts within their brigades.

"This academy creates more proficient Soldiers who now have the ability to teach others within their units to operate the systems," said Session.

The DSC is still in the planning stages for conducting additional academies throughout the calendar year, but Session has made it a priority of hers during her tenure.