The United States Army Command and General Staff College (CGSC) educates, trains and develops leaders for Unified Land Operations in a joint, interagency, intergovernmental, and multinational operational environment; and to advance the art and science of the Profession of Arms in support of Army operational requirements. [2]
Schools
The college consists of four schools:[2] the Command and General Staff School, the School of Advanced Military Studies, the School for Command Preparation, and the Sergeants Major Academy.
Command and General Staff School (CGSS) delivers a ten-month Command and General Staff Officers Course (CGSOC) in residence at Fort Leavenworth, KS, to just over 1,200 U.S. military officers, international military officers, and interagency partners each academic year. Additionally, the School teaches CGSOC Common Core to 960 students at four satellite campuses, and the CGSOC Common Core and Advanced Operations Course (AOC) via distance learning (DL) to approximately 5,300 active and reserve component officers around the world. Resident CGSOC students are eligible to pursue the Masters of Operational Studies (MOS) or the Master of Military Art and Science (MMAS). Chapter 7 details CGSS delivery of CGSOC.
– The School of Professional Military Education at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) on Fort Benning, GA, offers the ten-month resident Command and General Staff Officer Course in Spanish to approximately 64 US and international officers each year. Since 2012, CGSOC students at SPME have been eligible to pursue the MMAS.
School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) provides the Advanced Military Studies Program (AMSP) to 144 officers – most of whom just graduated from CGSOC – and the Advanced Strategic Leadership Studies Program (ASLSP) for 16 Senior Service College-select U.S. officers, international officers, and U.S. agency partners. All graduates of AMSP receive the Master of Arts in Military Operations, while graduates of ASLSP receive a Master of Arts in Strategic Studies. SAMS also manages the Army’s Advanced Strategic Planning and Policy Program (ASP3) within which Army officers pursue PhDs in international relations, public policy, economics, and history from leading universities in the U.S. and United Kingdom. There are currently 103 carefully selected senior Army strategic planners and future leaders in this program.
School for Command Preparation (SCP) provides continuing education for future Army battalion and brigade commanders, command sergeants major, and spouses in ten 1-4 week courses offered multiple times during each academic year. SCP’s important mission and ten courses are characterized in Chapter 10.
The Sergeants Major Academy (SGM-A) on Fort Bliss, TX, became CGSC's fourth school and a branch campus in March 2018. Each year, SGM-A offers the ten-month Sergeants Major Course-Resident (SMC-R) to 720 senior U.S. and international noncommissioned officers, and the SMC via distributed learning to another 1,320 mainly Army Reserve and National Guard NCOs around the world.
The Command and General Staff College confers a Master of Military Art and Science (MMAS) professional degree to graduates of the School of Advanced Military Studies as well as graduates of the Command and General Staff School who complete a thesis-level research paper. The degree is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission for collegiate institutions in the midwestern United States.[3]
The college reports that 7,000 international students representing 155 countries have attended CGSC since 1894 and that more than 50 percent of CGSC International Military Student (IMS) graduates attain the rank of general.[4]
^Otis, E. S. (1882). "8.—Report of Col. E. S. Otis". In United States War Department (ed.). Report of the Secretary of War; being part of the message and documents communicated to the two Houses of Congress at the beginning of the second session of the Forty-seventh Congress. In four volumes. Vol. I. Washington: GPO. pp. 173–177. Archived from the original on 27 October 2015. Retrieved 11 August 2013. (p.173): "As directed by the General of the Army, in communication of September 27, I have the honor to submit the annual report of proceedings and results at the United States infantry and cavalry school here located, or for the period from December 1, last, the date of its organization, to the present time. The school was organized under the provisions of General Orders No. 42, War Department, of May 7, 1881, which provided that the commanding general of the Department of the Missouri should, as soon as the requisite number of companies could be assembled at Fort Leavenworth, take measures to establish a school for infantry and cavalry similar to that in operation at Fort Monroe for the artillery arm of the service."