By Greg Grisolano
ggrisolano@joplinglobe.com
PITTSBURG, Kan. — Melissa Roush wanted to follow in her brother’s footsteps in Pittsburg State University’s ROTC program.
Her brother, Bradley Roush, was a battalion commander during his time at PSU, and he is completing his training for Special Forces duty. Melissa Roush said her brother’s success at PSU played a role in her decision to join the military.
“He’s the one who got me into ROTC,” she said. “It did a lot of good for him and helped him get his life off on the right foot.”
But Melissa Roush, a senior in biology at PSU, is going where no cadet in the history of PSU’s officer training program has gone before, as one of the most decorated in the program’s history.
Roush is set to receive two top national honors for military cadets during the program’s spring banquet tonight: the Legion of Valor Bronze Cross and the 2009 Pallas Athene Award.
“It’s really a big honor,” she said Wednesday. “But I’m just going out there and trying my hardest. It’s good to be recognized, but I would try just as hard either way.”
The Bronze Cross is awarded to the top cadets in the nation. Roush ranks 26th out of 4,703 cadets nationwide, according to a news release from PSU. The qualifications for that ranking include academic success, physical fitness, leadership and extracurricular activities.
She is the student battalion commander at PSU and supervises roughly 80 cadets who are in various levels of the ROTC program.
“As battalion commander, her function is really more of providing strategic vision and long-term planning,” said Lt. Col. Donald Stoner, chairman of the military sciences department at PSU. “The cadets run the battalion. They do the plans and execute the training, and she is an integral part of that.”
Stoner said Roush already has been highly decorated in her four years at PSU, and “she’s going to get some more Thursday night.”
“One of the things we focus on here is students first, because ultimately it’s academics and education that’s going to allow our cadets to be successful,” he said. “She definitely has the drive that it takes, and she sets a positive example.”
Officials say the Bronze Cross is such a rare award that the Army prefers it be conferred on a cadet by a Medal of Honor recipient. Col. Ron Seglie, a Pittsburg physician, will bestow the honor on the young woman.
The Pallas Athene Award is given to a handful of female cadets by the Women’s Army Corps Veterans’ Association.
When she graduates in May, Roush will receive a commission as a second lieutenant, but she will put off going into active duty so she can attend medical school at the University of Kansas. She said her goal is to become an Army medic.
“The military is a really good opportunity for me to go to other countries and to practice medicine there,” she said.
40 cadets
About 40 cadets in the ROTC program at Pittsburg State University will receive honors during a banquet at 6 p.m. today in the Crimson and Gold Ballroom at PSU.
