NIU’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) will conduct a commissioning ceremony at 11 a.m. Friday, May 10, for its graduating seniors.
The ceremony will take place at the Barsema Alumni and Visitors Center.
As part of this ceremony, the ROTC will unveil the “Huskie Alumni Project,” designed to commemorate all of the NIU ROTC graduates dating from the establishment of the program at NIU in 1968.
The project is a wooden pyramid, standing approximately 6 feet high with a flat top. On the top will be a bronze sculpture of a husky, created by local artist Renee Bemis. On the sides of the pyramid will be small plaques for every graduate, engraved with their names, dates of commission, commissioning numbers and branches of commission. Those alumni who have died will have blue plates; those killed in action will have red plates.
Each graduate has a commissioning number assigned to them; on Friday, commissionees 549 through 554 will receive their commissions as officers in the U.S. Army. As a special guest for the unveiling, commissionee No. 1 Wes Bjerregaard will be on hand. He commissioned as the first graduate in 1971.
Meanwhile, as part of a new tradition, graduates will see their own plaques added to the pyramid at the end of the ceremony as they join the honorable ranks of NIU’s contribution to the nation’s military leadership.
For more information, contact Lt. Col. David Dosier at (815) 753-6240 or at dosier@niu.edu.