Academics

Penn College cadets honored with ROTC awards

Penn College student Cadet Benjamin J. Sauter, of Montoursville, was presented with the Alan D. Gardner Award by retired Col. Larry L. Erdley. Credit: Penn StateCreative Commons

Four Pennsylvania College of Technology students and an administrator were among those honored during the recent Bucknell University Bison Battalion Army ROTC awards banquet.

Penn College and Bucknell – along with Bloomsburg and Susquehanna universities and Lycoming College – comprise the battalion, which presented the awards April 20 during a year-end event in the Lewisburg Alliance Church social hall.

“The achievement of these awards by our students is a testament to their commitment to ROTC and their academic programs,” said Carolyn R. Strickland, assistant vice president for academic services and Penn College’s liaison to the Bison Battalion. “What they learn about their own potential through their ROTC experiences is invaluable. We are extremely proud of all of our students participating in ROTC.”

Cadet Benjamin J. Sauter, of Montoursville, a spring graduate in Penn College’s technology management major, received the Alan D. Gardner and the George C. Marshall awards. The former is presented to the top senior (as selected by his classmates) and memorializes an ROTC graduate killed in a helicopter crash in Vietnam. The latter award is presented to a top senior cadet, inviting him to attend the George C. Marshall Conference in Virginia.

The Tiadaghton Chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution Award was presented to Cadet Daniel G. Curtin, a manufacturing engineering technology major from Berwick. The award is presented to the freshman showing the highest degree of merit in leadership qualities, military bearing and all-around excellence in the Bison Battalion.

Also at the banquet, Cadet Matthew Testagrose was honored by the American Veterans Association, which singled out his “outstanding qualities of leadership, moral character and high aptitude for military science.” Testagrose, enrolled in Penn College’s heavy construction equipment technology: Caterpillar equipment emphasis major, is from Shoreham, N.Y.

The Reserve Officers’ Association Bronze Award, for a cadet near the top of the ROTC class, was presented to Cadet Kyle A. Csorba, of Hamilton, N.J., a building construction technology student.

Along with the student awards, Strickland was an honorary inductee of the National Society of Scabbard and Blade, a leadership-development order more than a century old.

For more about Penn College, visit www.pct.edu, email admissions@pct.edu or call toll-free 800-367-9222.

Last Updated January 9, 2015

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