On a brisk winter morning, dozens of UC Davis students gathered at the A Street Field outside of Hickey Gym. They were about to undertake a physical gauntlet.
Deadlifts, push-ups, planks, sprint-drag-carries with 40-pound kettlebells and a 90-pound sled, and a two-mile run to top it all off.
You might think this regimen is for the university’s football team. But the physical feats were actually a part of the biannual Army Fitness Test.
“We want every cadet to be overall physically fit and able to handle any kind of physical challenge they might encounter,” said Capt. Alan Dugger, an assistant professor of military science at UC Davis. “A lot of what we build toward is passing and excelling at the Army Fitness Test and it is a measure of fitness that is conducted at least twice a year. Every soldier from private to a four-star general has to pass twice a year.”
One standout cadet among the group that morning was Zoe Schenk, who last year earned the highest Army Reserve Officer’s Training Corps Advanced Camp score in her brigade and the number one score of any female cadet in the nation.
UC Davis Forged Gold Battalion: a unique student experience
For Schenk, a senior majoring in biochemistry and molecular biology and minoring in religious studies, enrolling in the UC Davis Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC), a part of the Department of Military Science at the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis, was something inspired by her service-oriented family. Her mother was a nurse and her father was a pastor.
“The idea of service and sacrificing to help other people was just something that interested me,” Schenk said.
The more Schenk learned about the ROTC community, the more she was inspired by the people she saw pushing themselves to be better physically and mentally, who sought to transform into leaders. She found a home base at UC Davis.
Balancing academics and military training
Known as the Forged Gold Battalion, the UC Davis ROTC program is hosted at UC Davis but includes membership from students at California State University, Sacramento. About 80 students make up the program between the two campuses.
In addition to their major and minor classes, cadets in the Forged Gold Battalion undertake an array of courses related to military leadership, cultural and military history, and ballistics.
“For something that can be as destructive as war, having someone that is learned and educated in that process can help mitigate the worst effects of it,” Dugger said. “The better we are at our jobs, the more we can reduce the worst parts of war and that’s how military science approaches it.”
“The culture you’ll find in an ROTC program, at least the one here in Davis, feels very similar to being on a sports team,” Schenk said. “I remember during freshmen orientation, they talked with us about the importance of mentorship. The most successful students had two peer mentors and two adult academic mentors.”
Mentorship and leadership development in ROTC
That mentorship mentioned by Schenk is built into the ROTC program. Upperclassmen are paired with underclassmen and provide advice on course schedule building, joining a lab, ROTC-related issues and career trajectories.
“Whether it’s more personal or questions about furthering your Army career or academic questions, everyone is really excited and willing to help,” Schenk said.
In addition to the academics, cadets participate in physical training three times per week and a lab in which they learn military tactics, such as “movement to contact.”
“The context would be you’re in a platoon, which is made up of roughly 40 people, and it’s broken into four different squads,” explained Schenk. “The platoon is moving through an area and they know the ‘enemy’ is somewhere in the area and their job is to make contact.”
The cadets wear Army uniforms, brandish rubber replicas of M4 carbines called “rubber ducks” and fan out through the designated area in specific formations. Typically, in these drills, the fourth-year students run the lab while third years act as squad and platoon leaders. Second and first years make up the squad and platoon.
“Everyone’s really motivated to work together and be part of that team,” Schenk said.
Advanced Camp at Fort Knox: testing leadership and teamwork
Every summer, third-year students from ROTC programs across the country travel to Fort Knox, Ky. for a training event called the Army ROTC Advanced Camp. This past summer, more than 6,000 cadets participated in the 36-day training event that’s designed to test cadets’ critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
Schenk was among those cadets.
During the first couple of weeks, Schenk and the other cadets were tested on individual skills, including land navigation, basic rifle marksmanship and confidence training, which included obstacle courses such as a 70-foot rappel down a wall.
Eventually they transitioned to platoon level operations with each platoon consisting of 40 to 50 cadets. The camp’s setup mirrors “a deployment to an allied country which requires U.S. assistance,” according to the Army ROTC website.
The big event, though, is a field training exercise conducted over 12 days. It mimics offensive, defensive and stability military operations, with the cadets leading the planning and execution of the exercises.
“It’s testing how are you as leader,” said Schenk when describing the field training exercise. “How well are you able to accomplish a mission that you’re given as a leader.”
As Schenk deliberated over decisions, she was graded by the camp’s personnel who scored her based on her competency as a platoon leader.
“I absolutely loved my platoon,” Schenk said. “I would argue that we were the best platoon that Fort Knox has ever seen. That is probably what I was most grateful for.”
And it appeared the judges agreed.
Out of the 12 honors awarded at the camp, Schenk’s platoon won four. Schenk earned the Military Order of the World Wars Award, which honors a cadet “who best demonstrates the ability to evaluate, analyze, apply, and understand experiences and capabilities to solve tactical problem sets.”
She also received the Reconnaissance Commando badge, which is “awarded as a symbol of excellence in preparing for the rigorous and demanding conditions of Advanced Camp and achieving the highest levels of performance in Physical Fitness and Military Skills competencies.”
Schenk credits her success at Advanced Training Camp to her education at the UC Davis ROTC.
“I had a lot of great instructors over the years,” she said. “The cadre here really are willing to go above and beyond and the culture that they’ve fostered has created a lot of students who really want to do the best for one another.”
The history and legacy of ROTC at UC Davis
The U.S. Army’s ties to UC Davis aren’t new. In fact, the military’s presence on campus predates the 1959 formal naming of the university, going back all the way to 1923, when the campus was still an arm of UC Berkeley and known as the University Farm.
“Military science — it’s a smaller department, right? And I think we kind of get overlooked sometimes,” Dugger said. “We are literally at the edge of campus, and I’ve talked to other faculty members who have no idea we even exist.”
Dugger, who joined the U.S. Army in 2015 and the Department of Military Science in 2024, is an avid history buff and was curious about the department’s origins and its ties to campus. He sifted through the department’s historical archives and unearthed documents, including a trove of correspondences, dating back to January 1922.
“We have faced the same challenges and had the same highs and lows that the school has,” said Dugger. “The story of our department and our program mirrors UC Davis’ story.”
In January 1923, UC Berkeley started teaching ROTC at the Davis campus. The program was similar to the size it is today, with 70 students taught by a single officer. Today, Dugger shares that teaching and mentorship role with Lt. Col. Matthew Perez, who is the department chair and a professor.
“We try to develop cadets as young adults and professionals,” said Perez, who brings 19 years of U.S. Army experience to the program. “My job is to prepare the cadets for officership. While Capt. Dugger does the more academic portions, I’m more about the experiential things. I show them, ‘This is what you’re going to get when you get to a real Army unit.’”
In 1949, the university established a permanent ROTC unit on campus, and in the 1980s, it adopted the Forged Gold Battalion name.
Over the years, the program and its cadets have received numerous accolades. In 1988, the program was named the best-trained school in the nation and was later recognized by the MacArthur Foundation as the most outstanding program in the nation. Medal of Honor recipient Sgt. Maj. Jon Cavaiani even taught its students.
The program’s excellence protected it from shuttering.
In 1995, Lt. Col. Ronald Porter, who was then the chair of the military science department, said “UC Davis thrives despite the Army’s decision to close 15 to 30 military science programs annually.”
It continues to thrive today.
“That we’ve been here for so long and continue to be a persistent part of the university speaks to the value that we add,” Dugger said.
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