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State of TRACOM June 2012

Greetings, Marines;
I have to apologize for the lateness of this State of address; I became a tad overwhelmed when I was asked to be Acting COTRACOM and continue my duties as DCOTRACOM at the same time. I have some very large shoes to fill as my mentor and close friend, LGEN Mike McGowan, has been called to step up into the role of the illustrious DepDant billet. Mike, I hope I do you proud for as long as I have this job!
I am excited to say your General Staff has been hard at work designing and having fabricated lovely new qualification badges! Thus far, we are proud to offer our very own and exclusive to the SFMC qualification badges for IN-20 Advanced Infantry Badge, IN-30 Expert Infantry Badge, and the BEAUTIFUL AE wings. The pictures just simply do not do them justice and the price point is extremely economical. If you are qualified to wear one of these badges, I urge you to cruise on over to the QM Site (qm.sfi-sfmc.org) and order yourself one or two! Your General Staff has many more ideas for qualification badges in the works, so pay attention to the Corps List for those announcements!
We here at the SFMC-A have been working hard to expand our offerings of courses (for those of you who have taken all of them), and I as I write this, there are SEVERAL courses going to be made available to you, the student, over the next few months. This is one of several things I am excited about.
I want to thank everyone for their offers of assistance while I am Acting COTRACOM. At this time, with the acting status, I cannot hire nor fire a staff member. The outpouring of support has been phenomenal and truly shows what being a Marine really means.
I’d like to mention again that, thanks to the dedicated folks at INFOCOM, the Course Request System is working without a hitch. I would encourage students who had their academic activities delayed by the previous difficulties to consider resuming their programmed activities. You can now access *all* manuals via the new and improved SFMC-A site as well, as well as the applications for MURP and MOSC. Head on over to www.sfmca.sfi-sfmc.org to check us out if you haven’t done so yet!
I want to give a hearty welcome to the nine new students who have taken PD-10 and earned the Initial Entry Training Award during the month of June. Our wishes here at the SFMC-A and TRACOM are that you will continue your studies at our academy as we have many branches of interest to choose from and even more in the works! If you ever have any questions, always feel free to drop the branch directors an email.
Now for some names and numbers:
For June, we had 33 grades of PASS, 19 grades of HONORS, and 35 grades of DISTINCTION. YEAH!!
Congratulations to Lieutenant Colonel Jordan Reinleib for earning his Advanced Studies Device in Military History and his Special Operations Branch device!! Congratulations are also due to Lieutenant Colonel Jim Hutley for earning his Advanced Studies Device in Combined Arms and to Lieutenant Colonel Rodney Billings for earning his Bachelors of Military Science in Aerospace! Lieutenant Commander Kevin Johnson is now a graduate of the SFMC War College. HOO-RAH Marines!!
One final note in closing: I want to remind all Marines that when you are authorized to wear a ribbon or a qualification badge, the Corps does not supply them to you. We do have most, if not all, of the ribbons available for purchase via the SFMC Quartermaster as well as a few of the qualification badges I mentioned earlier. When the Corps presents you with an award, it is an authorization to wear such award or ribbon; it is up to the individual Marine to acquire it.
As always, if you ever have any questions for your General Staff, we are here to serve. Our individual email addresses can always be found on the main SFMC site (www.sfi-sfmc.org).
In Service to the Corps,
Gary Hollifield, Jr.
Major General, SFMC
Acting Commanding Officer, TRACOM
tracom@sfi-sfmc.org

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