We're beginning to tie all of the pieces together in our "Basic Introduction to the Coast Guard" (BIC) course here in USCG Auxiliary Flotilla Arlington | Northern Virginia. We quickly followed up last Monday's discussion concerning "Active Duty, Reserve, and Auxiliary Officers" up with discussion of the Coast Guard and Auxiliary Organizational Structure (the lesson on enlisted personnel is next). Rather than confuse our newest Auxiliarists with a lesson tackling the legacy AREA model and the future, modernized organizational structure, we opted to focus on the modernized Coast Guard while emphasizing that "this is where we are going, even though in some cases we aren't quite there yet." The Auxiliary has already moved forward with its organization realignment, so this approach made good sense. For those of you unfamiliar with modernization, or new to the Coast Guard entirely, I have found the video below from 2008 to be a very helpful primer; there is also a page on USCG.mil that tackles the topic in much greater depth.
I must admit that combining officers and organizational structure in one class session made for a grueling several hours of "information overload," but it also helped to contextualize where various people fit within a very large organization.
As always, the Basic Introduction to the Coast Guard (BIC) material is available online at http://link.cgauxnet.us/bic. Read this previous post for more background on the course or to learn how we got it underway. Feel free to use the material yourself, and of course please leave comments as to how we might improve BIC for future students. Thanks for reading, and thank you for your service!