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1st senior NCO to lead Sergeants Major Academy

Command Sgt. Maj. Raymond Chandler will make history June 29 when he becomes the first enlisted soldier to serve as commandant of the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy.

While other noncommissioned officer academies throughout the Army are headed by senior NCOs, commissioned officers have served as commandants of the Sergeants Major Academy since its establishment in 1973. The commandants typically have been colonels.

Chandler, currently the academy’s command sergeant major, will replace Col. Donald E. Gentry, who has been commandant since 2007.

The decision to move to all-NCO leadership at the academy comes during the Army’s “Year of the NCO,” and was made by Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, commander of the Training and Doctrine Command.

“Gen. Dempsey told us … this is what he wanted to do, and it was up to us to tell him how to do it,” Chandler said.

“And that’s what we’ve done. We’ve showed him how we are going to accomplish what he wants, which is empowering noncommissioned officers with their own education system, and putting them in control of that as a part of the Army’s leader development strategy, and also to recognize the Year of the NCO.”

Chandler said Sergeant Major of the Army Kenneth O. Preston has told him a new system will be developed for selecting the academy’s senior leader.

“I have to trust him to make that process work,” Chandler said. “His words to me were that there will be greater scrutiny placed on the selection of personnel to fill the position.”

Chandler, a native of Whittier, Calif., entered the Army in 1981, and has served in a variety of tank crewman and troop-leading positions with heavy divisions and armored cavalry regiments.

Before being assigned to the academy, Chandler was command sergeant major of the Armor School.

Chandler said his pending assignment as commandant “personally is a huge honor, and I am humbled by the people who said, ‘hey I want you to do this.’ ”

More important, he said, “is the 35 years of the all-volunteer Army and the NCO Education System. When it comes to this point, I don’t want to drop the ball.”

“I want to build on the legacy of what the Noncommissioned Officer Corps has done for the Army,” he said. “That’s a pretty big deal; it’s like, wow.”