Posted by Ben Simons in Academy Report - March 2020

Posted by Vice Admiral Daniel Lerner (Personnel Director, EGO) in Academy Report - March 2020

Posted by Ray Branch in Academy Report - March 2020
Posted by… suppressed (6) by the Post Ghost! 👻

(snip)

FComm’s Comments: Overall the ship is doing extremely well. We’ve had quite a few new applications so I anticipate this trend will continue. Sarah and her crew appear to be handling things quite well though, I don’t see any issues to report with expending the number of allowable cadets per department to four currently.

Have we considered reopening the second Academy ship?

Adam W.

Everyone involved is keeping an eye on the situation. The intention at this time is to stay with one ship and, with careful tracking and roster management, we haven’t hit an issue yet where there are no spots available for a new application.

Sarah, VP

Sarah, Dan says the following in his March PDept Report, which seems to paint a different picture to what you’ve said here:

It is basically impossible to ensure cadets are given their first choice of departments now, even with the changes mentioned in my comments at the end of this report. This is due to there being very limited availability in the Academy now. Of the nine placed cadets, two cadets were given their second choice and one cadet was given their third choice. This will change in April once we start placing Academy requests into non-Academy ships due to limited availability.

(bolding of last sentence is mine)

Is that no longer the case?

Russell

We’re currently almost two-thirds through April and no one has been placed on a mainstream ship who requested the Academy.

Sarah

Oh that’s good.

Russell

As Sarah said, we continue to monitor the situation. However, it can be hard to gauge what’s going on as a lot of applications can likely be related to the pandemic (loads of people staying home in need of hobbies - nothing wrong with that of course) and if we do restart the Endy and things in the world go back to “normal”, we’ll be basically in the same boat we were when we chose to stop assigning cadets to the Endy a few months back.

We need a bit more data before we essentially freak out and restart another ship. We need to breathe and give it a bit more time before we essentially freak out and coordinate staff for an entire ship if this upward trend continues. I hope it does, but barely two months of data isn’t enough to verify that’s what’s going on, particularly with the extenuating circumstances.

-Kat

I would suggest adding a JO position to each department and increase the number a department can hold (again) over commissioning another ship if we were to see an influx.

-Ray

Speaking as a current DH on the Challenger, that would be insane :P. We are currently at approximately four cadets per department, many of whom are very active. We are pushing mentors to the limit in mentoring. And we are struggling to find a role for 16 cadets in a sim within 12-16 weeks.

Going up to 5 cadets per department is absolutely impossible.

Daniel

Altso - typically our ships in the main fleets go up to 2 JOs per department, so having double that already, is making more positions on the ship truly the best thing?
Ben

As Dan mentioned and I’ll expand on as the Challenger’s CO, 4 JOs per department is creating a high activity level on the ship, both IC and OOC. If we increase it further, that could be extremely daunting to new members who are already trying to figure out how all of our systems work and I would quickly become concerned with the staff becoming burned out and unable to provide the level of mentorship that they would like to each cadet. Originally, I requested that Kat approve 4 JOs per department such that we would have room to cycle through the people who join and never post while keeping a mostly full roster, but we’ve been getting new members participating exceptionally well over the past few weeks and everyone is posting! In about three months, STF is going to have quite the collection of amazing new players looking for ships to expand their work in the club. :)

At this point, the plan forward is watchful waiting. As I indicated to Russ, no one has yet to be refused an Academy spot that wants one. At this moment, the Challenger has two openings for new members (with potentially a third opening up tomorrow). Should the Challenger become full, new members requesting an Academy spot would be given the option to wait for an opening or to go to a mainstream ship with mentor support. I’m already working with Kat and a few others to ensure that we can provide the best possible support in that situation.

~ Sarah (VP & CO, Challenger)