Command & Staff College Centennial

摘要

For a century, the Marine Corps Command and Staff College (CSC) has dedicated itself to developing field-grade officers as ethical leaders, critical thinkers, and creative problem solvers ready to excel as planners, staff officers, joint partners, and commanders. While nascent variations of officer education existed in the Marine Corps as early as the 1890s, the school known today as the Marine Corps CSC officially opened in 1920 as the "Field Officers' Course."1 Although modeled primarily after the Army's two mid-career officer schools in Forts Benning and Leavenworth, CSC began to take on its own Service-centric identity by the early 1930s when it shifted its cur-ricular focus to what would become the Marine Corps raison d'etre mission for the next one hundred years: amphibious operations. Over the next decade, the students enrolled in the course would actively contribute to, not just learn about, the emerging doctrine that would be applied countless times during the renowned "island hopping" campaign of the Pacific Theater in World War II. The school itself would be forced to close for the first two years of the war due to the pressing requirement for officers but would reopen in 1943, prompted by the revised demand to have educated staff officers planning these operations. The faculty consistently updated the course material informed by the latest developments occurring in the theater to best prepare their graduates for their new duties.