445th AES reservist trains new Air Force officers

  • Published
  • By Stacy Vaughn
  • 445th Airlift Wing Public Affairs
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio --  While many wing members took the opportunity during the summer to go on vacation, one reservist spent the summer teaching new Air Force officers the basics of officership and the Air force lifestyle. Maj. Dawn Rice, 445th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron, became a certified commissioned officer training instructor. She is now qualified to teach new medical, legal and chaplain officers coming into the Air Force that are going through Officer Training School at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala.

According to Lt. Col. Todd Ackerman, 23rd Training Squadron, COT seeks instructors who exemplify leadership, professionalism and integrity in teaching their newest Total Force medical, legal and chaplain direct-commissioned officers for their first assignments.

As one of her commanders, Colonel Ackerman said Major Rice was selected because of her excellent performance as a prior COT trainee and her operational experience as a flight nurse, which she can share with their future trainees.

"Major Rice had a superb initial instructor tour," Colonel Ackerman said. "She produced three distinguished graduates and helped her student squadron earn Honorary Squadron, which was the number one squadron out of three."

Major Rice began her three-month journey to become a COT instructor in June. The first seven weeks she completed academic instructor and instructor qualification courses, which prepared her to be an instructor. She then stayed an additional 5-6 weeks to teach her own class. She is now a certified AETC instructor, an additional duty to her 445th AES responsibilities.

"Every summer, they have a summer surge where class size goes from about 100 to more than 300 per class. A lot of the summer surge trainees are medical officers or officers going into the reserves," Major Rice said.

Major Rice said that being an instructor is much harder than anticipated. It involves delivering 25 classroom lectures and teaching trainees on the Leadership Reaction Course, the Confidence Course, the Assault Course and a mass casualty exercise.

"The hardest part was remembering that if I had to wake the trainees up by 4:30 a.m., I had to be up long before then," she said.

According to Major Rice, it's important to teach trainees, who are fully qualified in their professional civilian career fields, about officership because they can misunderstand rank structure and the leadership responsibilities that come with it.

"The greatest part of this experience was seeing the 16 people (in her flight) on day one and I was able to teach them what it means to be an officer in the Air Force and see the changes," Major Rice said.

Major Rice will go back to OTS to teach COT every summer and teach one or more classes. The classes generally run from May-June, July-August, and August-September. She will be one of 15 or so flight commanders.

"Because of her strong performance and medical experience, even before she left her current tour, I asked Major Rice to return in 2011 to teach another 15-30 new officers for our Air Force," Colonel Ackerman said.

(Capt. Caroline Wellman also contributed to the story)