Posted by Fleet Captain Adam W. (EGO) in Proposal: Return of the COiT Program

Posted by Fleet Captain Adam W. (EGO) in Proposal: Return of the COiT Program

Posted by Commodore Calé Reilly (STF Surgeon General / FComm, Foremost Fleet) in Proposal: Return of the COiT Program
Posted by… suppressed (8) by the Post Ghost! 👻
Problem:

One of the most important roles to the continued success of STF is Commanding Officer (CO). A ship can go from virtually dead to active and healthy and vice versa, solely due to a change in this position. While we have the CO course and exam in the Academy, some players may be feel more comfortable with better preparation for the role and this mutually benefits STF by having better trained, ready to jump in CO candidates when CO vacancies open up.

Proposal:

Return the Commanding Officer (CO) position on Academy ships to a training position. The breakdown of responsibilities would be as such (in order of the chain of command):

1. XO (Executive Officer) - The XO would be appointed by the President of STF in consultation with the Academy Commandant. The XO is second in command in the roleplaying sense only; the XO outranks the CO on issues of ship administration. The XO must have held a CO position on a mainstream ship.


2. CNS (Counselor) - The CNS would be appointed by the XO in consultation with the Academy Commandant. The CNS is third in command in the roleplaying sense only; the CNS is second in command on issues of ship administration. The CNS must have held a XO position on a mainstream ship.


3. CO (Commanding Officer) - The CO is appointed by the Academy Commandant in consultation with the President. The CO must be an active mainstream XO unless there are no eligible and interested individuals. The “CO in Training” (COiT) will be granted the roleplaying rank of Captain, but this rank does not extend beyond the Academy and will not affect the player’s member rank.

Essentially, an Academy XO fulfills much of the role of a mainstream CO and an Academy CNS fulfills much of the role of a mainstream XO. The CO would remain on the ship for either one or two sims and receive support with the roleplaying responsibilities as well as be included on ship administration matters. Once “graduated,” the COiT should be given precedence for any CO vacancy, similar to the acknowledgement given to CO exam graduates.

A description of how this worked in the past can be found in Dipper #22.

Discussion:

• It could lead to a less smooth Academy experience for new cadets, but this is countered by the program demonstrating that we offer support at all levels of club involvement. The CO would still be a fairly experienced player who can lend mentorship to the cadets and new DHs.


• The workload for the XO and the CNS on an Academy ship would be higher and must be explicitly defined.


• It would need to be determined if a formalized graduation/evaluation process is required for the COiT side of the program or if it could remain a more informal mentorship opportunity.


• The current CO would have to be fired, but I spoke with her and she’s ok with that.

Sarah, VP

I wasn’t here when the COiT program was in effect. It is my understanding that this model was deemed to not succeed at the things it was expected to do, and that is why it was discontinued. But, I don’t actually know; this was like 4 or 5 years before I joined the club.

Does anyone know why we stopped doing this the first time? I think that’s a pretty important detail to know before proposing to do it again.

Joe

I joined as a Cadet on the Columbia at the coat tails of it. This was after the last COiT left the ship, and I don’t know how long it was before the COiT person left the ship.
On the Columbia, Brian Olinski was IC XO and OOC CO. Jack Dipper was IC CNS and OOC XO. From memory one of the main reasons it was ended was because people on the training program ‘graduated’ to the position of main fleet CO before they finished their training program. I certainly know as a Cadet I found it odd that we didn’t have a CO on the ship in the early days.

I was trained in the arts of being a CO by Brian Olinski when I got my first command, by the way. He was my XO, and kind of put me through an unofficial COiT on board the then Draco.

Russell

COiT was removed in mid-2006. I had originally included some historical information in my proposal, but I opted to remove it because the STF that existed then is very different than the one that exists now. Since Joe asked, here’s some of the original discussion, although it appears much of it took place offline:

https://www.star-fleet.com/archive/post/888612
https://www.star-fleet.com/archive/post/898218

The major concerns highlighted with the program that existed then were:

• COiTs were only getting IC practice and no ship administration experience. This meant that the XO and the CNS were swamped trying to mentor the COiT, DHs, and cadets, as well as handling all of the administration side of things.
• Over the course of a year, only two COiTs managed to “pass” the program. During that time period, 12 CO vacancies were filled with brand new Captains.
• There was no syllabus or explanation on what COiTs were supposed to be learning in the program.

The goal of my proposal is more along the lines of what Russell has stated here was his experience with Brian (who, by the way, was one of my COiTs as Challenger XO :)). The COiT should get hands on experience with as many aspects of running the ship as possible, but the XO would retain the final say. The mentorship arrangement looks like this in my head:

• XO focuses on mentoring CO
• CNS focuses on mentoring any new DHs
• DHs focus on mentoring cadets

That way, no one ends up feeling burnt out by the demands of the position.

As to the other points, there should likely be a graduation evaluation similar to the cadet one that formalizes the goals of the program. The point about openings in the main fleet is mostly irrelevant now; we have certainly not had 12 new XOs promoted to CO in the last year. In fact, the lack of prime mentorship opportunities for a new CO is one of the reasons I am bringing this forward.

Sarah

I wasn’t around to see this succeed or fail the first time around, but my initial reaction is that I don’t like the proposal in its current form.

I’ve spent a good amount of time working in the Academy in various capacities. I’ve seen Academy ships with good CO’s and Academy ships with bad CO’s. The ones with good CO’s give cadets a much better experience. This proposal as it is puts in place for cadets a very different structure than they’ll encounter in the main fleet. It causes there to be less experience guiding the ship. It also isn’t a typical experience for the CO.

I think it would be far better to try something like this in the main fleet, which would allow for both the CO in training and the cadets to have an experience more like what they will encounter in the main fleet. The XOit program was modeled very nicely a bit ago in the Main Fleet by the Ogawa. Why not do the COit in the main fleet? Or some other setup that doesn’t mix learning CO’s with learning JO’s?

If we have CO’s now that aren’t trained well enough to succeed, what if we put effort into training our current CO’s? I think this could be happening through the Command Mentorship Program if more people were aware of it existing.

Adam W.

In theory, this program sounds wonderful. Until you consider the below.

Isn’t this what the position of XO is for? At least, it should be. Not exclusively of course, but I feel that more emphasis should be put on that during this discussion. With this program, why would I want to apply for a XO position in main fleet? Assuming that the COiT program is only one/one (one COiT for one sim) then that’s 3 months, rather than the extended timeframe for a mainfleet XO (using that XO should be in a similar vein of a training program). Even with a one/two setup for the COiT, that’s 6 months, main fleet sims can run longer than that.

What motivation would there be to go main fleet XO and hope I get the chance to get a ship soon, when I can go COiT, get priority, and possibly be a CO in about half the time?

Katy

(sorry for not snipping, but posting on phone…)

I am all for the idea of doing something with CO training. I don’t know about doing it on an academy ship. I don’t feel that I know enough about it to lean one way or the other with that.

However, I do think Katy makes a good point. Maybe we should expand the idea to include XO training? Would a COXOiT program be better all around? I think that’s worth looking at and thinking about. We have several ideas and at least one program that supposed to be functional whether it’s currently being used or not. I vaguely remember when the Mentorship program was being discussed but it’s been a while and I’ve been away. I’d be down with seeing if we could overhaul what we have to include these ideas. Or take bits and pieces of what we have and combine them with new ideas to make something new.

I am glad we’re having this conversation though, as I do feel it’s something we should be discussing.

-Dave Eads

Even with that, if I’m in this program, why would I want to be COit/XOit anywhere else? If I get priority on the next promotion/ship from this thing, what is the point of being XO anywhere but in this program? You’re devaluing the whole concept of the XO position unless someone gets lucky and 2 ships come up at the same time and there’s only one COiT graduate. Why should I sit here, put in all the time as an XO, and then have to wait for god-knows-how-many COiT grads to get ships before I get my chance?

Katy

In all fairness, though being an XO does help to prepare you for a CO post the roles are different and not synonymous with one another. There are people in the club who have been a great XO for years and don’t want to be a CO and there are COs who never were XOs before being made a Captain.

The issue with the XOit program which Adam is referring to on the Ogawa was that the Edson doing it applied for an XO post that came up and got it and then left the XOit role before the sim was finished. This had an impact on the ship and the sim and then the person had to get used to different COs expectations and ended up frustrated etc.

I understand what Adam is saying regarding the academy ship maybe being not the best place if JOs and COS are all learning together, it has worked in the past so It may be fine now, however, and I may be way off base here, but just as a suggestion that I’m happy to have shot down, would it be a terrible thing to have a space where we turn the academy model on its head? Have a ship where the XO and CNS and say one JO in each dept are experienced players and the CO and DH are people who haven’t been in the role before?

Cale

I like that upside-down idea, Cale. To me, it’s better than having leaders and new players learning on the same ship.

I do kind of wonder what happens if we train people for CO positions and then they still don’t end up getting CO positions. I would imagine that would be frustrating.

Adam

I should say I like it more than the proposal. I think it might be hard to find enough experienced people to pull it off.

Adam

Personally I agree with Katy and Deads regarding this. We have plenty of talented people already working to learn the ins and outs in XO spots. A player who passed the CO exam and has been an active XO in the fleet is pretty much the same idea to me here. Could we find ways to do more hands-on training? Yeah, that is always good. Using this though as a springing board for that doesn’t seem to be the way to do this. We have methods to train people in place, so perfecting those methods and utilizing them properly is far better than trying to implement some system that has already failed once before.

~Steven Sigle