FORT KNOX, Ky. - Two classes began this week in the new spacious home of the School of Cadet Command. And while students are learning how to be effective Army ROTC instructors and recruiters, the building itself offers a lesson in perseverance and networking.
Close to 50 students from college campuses and brigade headquarters from across the country have settled into Callan Hall to take part in the Recruiting Operations Officer and Instructors Training courses.
Cadet Command has held all of its classes at spots around Fort Knox since late summer. After the last course - the Senior Leader Development Program - took place at Fort Monroe in August, workers spent three weeks dismantling the Virginia site and shipping equipment and other items to Kentucky.
The commandant of the School of Cadet Command, or SOCC as it's commonly called, said space in Callan won't be an issue.
"It gives me great flexibility and space to meet the demands for training," Alan McKeag said. "There will be less turning people away."
The 11,500 square feet within Callan Hall, almost twice the size of the Fort Monroe facility, allows for three classrooms, two conference rooms, several offices, storage space and a break room. It also features two conference rooms equipped with video teleconferencing and other multi-media capabilities.
Because of all the additional space, the facility was designed with possible expansion in mind.
The school holds 58 classes a year, as well as various workshops and seminars. Instruction is provided to everyone from professors of military science to enlisted military instructors to human resource assistants to brigade commanders and other civilians.
With the space in Callan Hall, which is on Second Dragoons Road, Cadet Command is also relocating its curriculum division to the facility, a move that for the first time puts the writers of the instruction under the same roof as those teaching it. There will be room, too, for members of the personnel and scholarship divisions to conduct accessions and scholarship boards outside the confines of the small office setting.
"There is an unequivocal tie," McKeag said. "This puts us all together. That was key."
Improvements to Callan Hall and the school's move from Fort Monroe, Va., are transparent to students, McKeag said. But had it not been for the focus of command leadership and Base Realignment and Closure coordinators, Cadet Command might not have had the home it wanted.
"We had been coming out here for three years working on this project," McKeag said. "We're pleased with what developed."
Plans initially called for the school to be housed in the Maude Complex. However, as the home for Accessions Command and the Human Resources Command took shape, that shape eventually widened to take more room, eventually consuming space designated for the school.
So in summer 2009, Fort Knox garrison leadership offered Palma Hall north of the 194th Armor Training Brigade area to house the SOCC and the Junior School of Cadet Command. But Cadet Command officials saw the building as too distant and not conducive to the missions.
They set out to find another spot. A short time later, Cadet Command BRAC coordinators pinpointed Callan and neighboring Libby Hall as possible sites for the programs.
The problem with those buildings: The tenant - 194th - wasn't slated to vacate the facilities until the Armor School moved to Fort Benning, Ga., in summer 2011. And renovations would push a move-in date to sometime in 2012.
Chuck Waggoner, one of Cadet Command's BRAC representatives, went to the 194th leadership to negotiate. The agreement they brokered was that the 194th, which had been using Callan for nuclear-biological-chemical training and said it could teach the class elsewhere, would leave Callan last April but continue to use Libby until summer 2011.
That allowed for Callan renovations to begin this summer. The building was gutted and configured to Fort Knox and Cadet Command standards.
"We had a lot of different players, and there were a lot of moving parts that had to fall in place to make this happen," said John Sogan, Cadet Command's BRAC project manager. "In the end, it was a win-win for everybody."
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