CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. — At zero-six hundred, Zero-six hundred found lance corporals with 8th Engineer Support Battalion dressed in physical training in PT gear, took taking turns staring into a cardboard box filled with assorted office supplies in a race to memorize every detail about the contents before their 30-second time limit was up.

As they jogged off to the next challenge here on Wednesday, Sgt. Maj. Russell Strack, the battalion's senior enlisted leader, looked on with satisfaction.

"It's a mental as well as a physical exercise," he said, encouraging the supervising instructor to bang on objects around the box to add another level of distraction. "It shows how well the Marines operate under stress."

Known as a Kim's game, the PT-and-memory test hybrid is a staple of Marine infantry and sniper training. Now the test is being weaved into It has become a Wednesday tradition at the brand-new Lance Corporal Leadership and Ethics Seminar, a week-long professional military education unit now being piloted at 8th ESB and a limited number of other East Coast units.

When new rules take effect next October, the command-sponsored seminars will become a promotion requirement for lance corporals to make corporal, a first-of-its-kind mandatory resident professional military education experience for PME at the E-3 rank. But Strack and the other program administrators at 8th ESB are trying to cycle the unit's junior Marines through the seminar well ahead of that deadline, and working to demonstrate the course's value to other unit leaders as they go. With the fourth week-long class freshly completed, they said the program is winning rave reviews from its graduates.

The mandatory lance corporals' seminar is part of a slate of PME changes designed to better train and prepare the Corps' noncommissioned officers to lead junior Marines. While current regulations allow corporals and sergeants to complete online courses, with resident PME optional, the new requirements will make resident PME mandatory for promotion at both ranks.

Corps officials developed the seminar for lance corporals after noticing a gap in enlisted education, Brig. Gen. Thomas Weidley, president of the Marine Corps University and commanding general of Education Command, told Marine Corps Times in the spring. They saw an opportunity to reach Marines at that rank to talk about some of the issues plaguing the service, he said.

Designed as a seminar rather than a course, the Leadership and Ethics program for lance corporals is valuable as a foundation for the more in-depth courses that follow, Strack said. Since it fills the It also fills a crucial gap in PME, lance corporals leave better prepared ing Marines to take on the next rank, he said.

"I remember as a junior Marine, you weren't even considered a corporal until you started acting like a corporal," he said. "This [seminar] gets them being a corporal on Dday one 1, not Dday 120."

Making future NCOs

To build the classroom space for the seminar, Strack and the seminar chief, Gunnery Sgt. Michael Marie, repurposed a building within the 8th ESB barracks complex that had been used for storage and was, in Strack's words, "kind of an abomination."

They cleared out and cleaned up, creating five squad-sized classroom spaces where most of the discussion and instruction within the course takes place. Lance corporals chevrons and leadership and values posters accent the walls. ed by lance corporal chevrons abound, and oOne wall contains a A row of framed portraits show of all the Marine Medal of Honor recipients who earned the award as lance corporals. There are six in all, and the most recent is William Kyle Carpenter, who received the Medal of Honor as a retired corporal in June.

After each morning combat conditioning session, designed to give the lance corporals creative ideas for leading their own PT workouts, the seminar moves into topical discussions on subjects like Marine Corps values, leading and following, and ethical leadership. Each day also includes discussion of a chapter of the Marine Corps warfighting manual "Leading Marines."

On a Wednesday, each new class segment was introduced by a short video clip. ; bBefore the kickoff session on leading and following, the 43 students laugh at a YouTube video showing a man dancing exuberantly by himself in a group of people until a first follower joins in. Minutes later, the entire group is dancing.

"There is no movement without the first follower," a narrator intones. "The best way to make a movement, if you really care, is to courageously follow and show others how to follow."

Then, the sergeants hand-picked to lead the seminar's smaller sessions took over as the students broke into five squads of eight 8 to 10 Marines.

Unlike most of nearly all the lance corporals, these sergeants had deployed to combat zones and frequently slipped their own war stories into the lesson material. --They discussed what they had learned about perseverance from a 36-hour explosive ordnance disposal mission, or innovation gained from learning how to adjusting explosive firepower while blasting walls in Afghanistan.

The students drank in the details.

While Fridays at the seminar include a discussion on f force preservation and specific social and disciplinary issues facing the contemporary Marine Corps, the squad discussions are concept-driven, and the lance corporals do most of the talking.

One of the most engaged discussions Wednesday centered on moral and ethical challenges in combat and garrison. In one squad, lance corporals crowded around a whiteboard as they brainstormed ing potential ethical dilemmas they could face, from following rules of engagement in a war zone to avoiding inappropriate relationships with subordinates at home.

Reinvigorating a rank

Throughout the course, the staff kept reminding the students that they were part of the Corps' largest population and the source of its best ideas. ; aAs Strack put it, lance corporals are the heart and soul of the Marine Corps, not just its "worker bees."

"You don't see it, but you guys are leaders," said Sgt. Keith Winkeleer, the leader of Squad 1 at the seminar and an EOD technician attached to 8th ESB. "You're 44 percent of the Marine Corps."

The course will come at a crucial juncture for lance corporals who may be undecided about whether to pursue a longer career in the Corps, and for whom job enthusiasm may be ebbing. During the seminar, Marines who haven't had resident PME since boot camp, Strack said, will get a timely reminder of why they're serving, and a refresher course on basic protocol and drilling skills, Strack said.

Anecdotally, Marines seem to be picking up the message.

"Fresh in the fleet, I felt like I lost my purpose in joining and was developing bad habits," wrote Lance Cpl. April Wilson, a bulk fuel specialist, on an after-action evaluation from an earlier seminar. "This seminar was an amazing way to bring the motivation to love what I do back."

Another student, Lance Cpl. Angela Dixon, wrote that the course had improved her opinion of the Corps' noncommissioned officers.

"The squad leaders here actually changed my mind about becoming an NCO," she wrote. "They're what I want to be like and who I want to work with."

Lance Cpls. James Faulkner, an engineer equipment operator, and Patrick Dillon, a combat engineer, told Marine Corps Times they looked forward to leading their own innovative PT sessions when they returned to their units.

"You actually learn a lot, and I'm glad I came to it," Dillon said.

With nearly a year until the seminar becomes mandatory across the Marine Corps, it's still possible the program could evolve in the meantime. In the stack of after-action evaluations made available to Marine Corps Times, one recommendation appeared on nearly every form: expand the course to two weeks to further develop the themes presented. Strack said II Marine Expeditionary Force Commander Maj. Gen. William Beydler and 2nd Marine Logistics Group Commander Brig. Gen. Charles Chiarotti, had visited the course and would be kept informed of suggestions like that one.

With a shrinking force, the seminar is also a way to make sure the best candidates for promotion rise to the top, administrators said, as lance corporals will have to make the effort to complete it before they're eligible.

"Your cutting score's still going to be there," Strack said. "But it adds an extra layer. It's one way to make sure you put the right people in the right positions."

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