Because of a LSU master’s program offered at Fort Polk in Alexandria, officers sent there see opportunity instead of a dead end assignment.
Service men and women training for military combat at Fort Polk have a chance to earn a Master of Liberal Arts degree with a concentration in military history.
MALA director and professor Stanley Hilton, said the 12-year-old program has been very successful in recent years.
“We are serving an academic function while maintaining academic standards,” Hilton said. “Two students in the last two years have had their theses published.”
Another LSU faculty member who travels to Fort Polk to teach on weekends, history professor Karl Roider, said the attitude toward Fort Polk has changed among officers recently.
“When military officers were assigned to Fort Polk in the past they thought they had been assigned to the end of the world,” Roider said. “Over the last few years though, we’ve gotten guys who have requested to come to Fort Polk to take our program.”
Cpt. Trevor Hough is enrolled in the program now and said he heard about MLA overseas.
“I learned about the program when I was in Iraq and was told just that it was a good program and the professors were excellent and very user friendly,” Hough said. “There were a couple officers in my unit that had completed the program.”
Lt. Col. Jim Daniel, who went through the program in its early years said he heard about it from a colleague at Fort Polk.
“I was told it was a great opportunity to study military history and earn a master’s degree in a convenient and economic way,” Daniel said. “This was new because many programs then were too expensive for our military pay or just not realistic because of the amount of time we spent in the woods. I was not disappointed.”
A master’s degree is not required in the army, but it is valuable, Roider said.
“If you have a master’s, your chances of promotion are much higher,” Roider said.
Capt. Todd Mitchell said a masters degree is beneficial for those in the army.
“Gaining a masters degree is an unwritten requirement to progress past captain as an Army officer,” Mitchell said. “Officers assigned to a nominative assignment after commanding, are typically encouraged to use that tour to get a masters degree.”
MLA graduate, Chris Albus, said his biggest obstacle while at Fort Polk was a reassignment before his classwork was complete.
“Both Doc Hilton and LSU did an outstanding job working with me online to allow for independent study,” Albus said. “I still had a requirement to return to Baton Rouge for final exams.”
Hilton said 15 to 20 students in the MLA program have gone to combat so far.
“It gives war a human dimension when you have students over there,” Hilton said.” really admire those men and women. They are deployed in the middle of class.”
Roider said he has taught students who have been deployed to Kosovo, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan. The program has to be very flexible when taking into consideration the students’ schedules, he said.
“One of the guys flew in from Sudan to take exams,” Roider said.
Even the students without reassignments or deployments should be sympathized with, Hilton said.
“Fort Polk is on the cutting edge of training people in the latest tactics,” Hilton said. “The people training there are constantly on the field, then in the students’ spare time, they read. That represents sacrifice.”
Hough said he appreciates the flexibility and accessibility of the program.
“The program is very flexible and works around our schedule here at the JRTC [Joint Readiness Training Center],” Hough said. “Plus, the professors come here to us which makes it easier to learn (rather than distance education) as I enjoy the interaction with the profs.”
Students expressed a great deal of gratitude toward the professors. Daniel said Hilton’s brilliant example of what a dedicated professor means is a standard he wishes to achieve one day.
“Make no mistake, Dr. Hilton was the embodiment of the LSU program at Fort Polk,” Daniel said. “Without his dedication and belief in the benefits it provided young leaders in the Army, the program would have surely collapsed.”