Green to Gold is a program that allows active duty soldiers to leave the Army, go back to school to earn a degree and participate in ROTC, and return to the Army with a commission as a Second Lieutenant.

I recently received an email from one of our recently graduated, and currently deployed alum. LT Jeremy Paro is currently serving in the Transportation Corp in Afghanistan. He wrote requesting some information about Green to Gold for his soldiers. Here is what he asked.

I am writing as some of my Soldiers have expressed interest to me in potentially becoming Officers. Is there any material or literature that I can give them or print out for them that outlines the process to apply for the Green to Gold program or just joining ROTC via a normal 2-4 year scholarship?

So, in an effort to make things simple I’m going to turn my response into a blog post (is this being lazy, or smart???)

Here is my response

The best way for your soldiers to start the process is to visit http://www.goarmy.com/rotc/enlisted-soldiers.html

Once they check that out I would suggest they go on facebook and visit http://www.facebook.com/green.to.gold.

Captain Smith at Fort Drum is one of our cadre who does nothing but Green to Gold (he actually does some other things, but mostly G2G). He can help any applicant, anywhere in the world, who wants to attend school anywhere. And the last location for good information is here

http://drumg2g.wordpress.com/

Hope that helps…make sure all your soldiers know about the GKB, and see if any of them play hockey.

I hadn’t been on the facebook page in a while, but when I swung over there to get the link I was reminded just what a great job Captain Hunt, and now Captain Smith have done spearheading a new approach to Green to Gold. They have essentially taken the initiative to be the primary point of contact between Cadet Command and the field force for anyone considering Green to Gold. They have simplified a process that was a little bit of a mystery, and found some unique ways to leverage things like the non-scholarship option. Last semester we added 5 Green to Gold cadets to the GKB. One received an Active Duty Option scholarship, and the other four joined us through the non-scholarship option. We added one more non-scholarship cadet this spring.

If you are a Soldier wishing to pursue the Green to Gold option check out the links, contact the Fort Drum Green to Gold officer, and start looking at colleges.