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Welcome to the SERI Staff Ride client area. Please select the appropriate password-protected link to the right to find specific information about your scheduled staff ride.

More About the Staff Ride Experience

 The purpose behind a staff ride is not so much to learn history, as to learn about leadership. Although participants plunge more deeply into a particular historical episode than do casual visitors to a battlefield, the purpose is not to make you buffs.

Rather, the purpose is to help leaders address larger problems of team-building, management, and leadership.  Every staff ride participant gives a talk from the vantage point of a participant in the campaign. These talks form the core of the staff ride. Plan to speak for ten minutes (not more) and "in role." That is, you should play the historical part you are assigned as sympathetically as you can, although without distorting the facts. Without transgressing the historical reality let your imagination do its best to recreate a problem or issue as your character (Robert E. Lee, George Meade, etc.) might have seen it. It would be useful if you could drop "into character" periodically throughout the day.   In all cases, in addition to answering the question put to you, please do the following:

• Be ready to introduce your character with a brief biographical sketch;
• Describe what your character did at the rough geographical or chronological point at which you are speaking;
• At some point - in role or out, as you please - provide whatever insights into their leadership style and qualities (including problems) you think you have gained from the readings.

  This may seem like a tall order. The best course is to let yourself go and have some fun with the role -- it will be more enjoyable and, in the end, conducive to better discussion if you do.

Things To Bring

You can expect to do a lot of walking over uneven, and in some cases rough terrain. Dress is, of course, quite casual. The bus will be available for anyone who cannot make any particular walk, however, so even if you are not a hiker you will have no trouble. At any rate, it would be a good idea to bring the following:

• A canteen or water bottle
• Sturdy hiking shoes
• A hat
• Please wear long pants and apply insect repellent; we will be walking through brushy areas, and tick bites are not unknown.
• Something to snack on if you are so inclined
• Binoculars will make the trip particularly worth while and we urge you to bring them.
• ZIPLOC bags for any paper you bring (take along a map or a xerox copy of one, if you can) may be a good idea.
• You may need rain gear should the weather turn inclement, and depending on the time of year, it can get rather chilly during a full day on the battlefield.
• We recommend checking the weather forecasts for the battlefield area the day before, and dressing appropriately

 

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