The 2016 Army ROTC Annual Awards Ceremony honored cadets from Cal State Long Beach, along with cadets from three other universities, for their leadership, excellence and responsibility.
Bob Hope Patriotic Hall in Los Angeles welcomed the Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps on March 4 to award the most recognized cadets in different categories: academic awards, physical fitness awards, recognition awards and leadership awards along with scholarships.
Antuan Alvarez, CSULB Army ROTC cadet recruiting retention and public affairs officer, was one of the students honored at the event.
“The award ceremony is a chance for a few cadets to get appreciated by our organization, and those people who were up there definitely deserved it,” Alvarez said. “Although not everyone was recognized, everyone here in our organization put [in] an effort and should get some recognition at some point — in our organization we have the yearly awards ceremony, and campus awards ceremony.”
Other CSULB students who won include Cadets Daniel Eagan, Taylor Phi – who received the Ranger award – and Nancy Vallecillo.
Vallecillo, a sophomore industrial design major, said that she is honored and proud to be part of the Army ROTC program at Long Beach.
As a participant in the award ceremony, Vallecillo didn’t know who was going to be awarded but said she was happy when she won the Iron Woman award.
She said she dreamt of joining the army as a little girl to serve her country.
“As a kid, I remember my mom telling me to join the police enforcement instead of the Army because she was afraid of me leaving, but I found ROTC and I decided to stay in the program and as a result, I got contracted.”
Army ROTC is a program that puts students on track to becoming commissioned officers in the military while paying their tuition.
“We basically recruit students and provide them with whatever skills they need to be successful in whatever field that they would want to get into in the military,” Alvarez said.
The other award-winning ROTC students came from the University of Southern California, California State University Dominguez Hills and the University of Irvine.
Josie Mandala contributed to this story.