Welcome to the Cadet Programs section of the California Wing.  Our goal is to provide consistent opportunities for Cadets to achieve. Through events that focus on Leadership, Aerospace, Emergency Service, Drill and Ceremonies and Character Development, members can explore and learn ways to hone their skills to better themselves and our community. Some of the events we hold to facilitate this exploration are; Encampment, Integrated Leadership Program (ILP), Search and Rescue Exercises and Airshows.

Cadets, challenge yourself to do all you can to prepare to be a leader and to make a difference. Seniors, help provide a safe environment to assist Cadets in their growth and achievements. This can happen when YOU participate in the program, so sign up or volunteer and let’s do this together. Hope to see you at an event soon.

The information provided in the section will be updated each month.  It is here so that the membership can always be informed as to what is going on in their California Wing Cadet Program.

Wayne C. Brown, Lt Col, CAP
Director Cadet Programs
California Wing

Lt Col Wayne C. Brown, CAP

Greetings CAWG Cadet Program Officers,                                                                                                          UPDATE – 18 May 2024

 
As we look forward to our summer of CAP activities, I wanted to take a moment to highlight the success of the California Wing Cadet Competition last weekend at Camp San Luis Obispo, CA.  
 
There were four squadrons competing from all over CAWG, and I particularly wanted to congratulate these teams for traveling to Camp SLO for the event and doing their best:
  • Sacramento Composite Squadron 14
  • Diablo Composite Squadron 44 (Concord, CA)
  • 45th Composite Squadron (Riverside, CA)
  • San Diego Cadet Squadron 144 
 
Col Newton joined with the competing teams for a class photo.  

 

Two teams earned the right to represent California Wing in the Pacific Region Cadet Competition on Labor Day weekend. 

 
🏆Congratulations to our first place winning team San Diego Cadet Squadron 144, Group 8.
Squadron 144 retained possession of the CAWG Commander’s Cup for a second year. 
🏆Congratulations to our second place team that will also represent CAWG at Pacific Region Competition, Diablo Composite Squadron 44, Group 2
Special Thank you to our CAWG Cadet Competition leadership team for leading such a successful event. 
  • Lt Col Michael Samuel, Activity Director
  • Captain Austin McCoy, Activity Officer
  • 1st Lt Isiah Gonzalez, Activity Officer

 

We hope that more teams can join for next year’s CAWG Cadet Competition as we had room for several more teams to compete.  This was an amazing activity that evaluated cadets not only in drill and ceremonies but in physical readiness, CAP knowledge and team leadership skills.  It was a fun low cost event, please consider sending a team in 2025.
The executive leadership team of the CAWG encampment, is spending this weekend 17-19 May at Camp Roberts, CA preparing for an excellent student training experience.  
  • CAWG has another outstanding encampment planned for 24 June – 02 July with Pre Encampment starting on 21-June.
  • Acceptance packets for the encampment will begin distribution on 20-May.
  • Student arrival to the encampment is 12:00 – 15:00 on 24 June to the front gate at Camp Roberts, CA
  • Graduation will begin at 11:30 on Tuesday 2 July.
For further information on the CAWG encampment, please remain updated at:
Our Senior Leadership team for encampment this year is led by Major Steven Angus, Encampment Commander.  Captain Rafael Delgado is the Deputy Commander for Support, Lt Col John Boyle is serving as Commandant of Cadets, and Major Lisa Cherry is Chief Training Officer.
 
The Cadet Training Group Commander C/ Capt Wong (Center) is joined by his executive leadership team this weekend at Camp Roberts, CA as they make plans for encampment.
Thank you Major Cherry and the CAWG Group Cadet Programs Officers team for their kick off monthly meeting this last week. We have a full team of Group CPO Leaders in place and encourage squadrons to contact them for resources and support as needed.
 
Group Cadet Program Officer  Email
Los Angeles County Group 1 Captain Daisy Lee daisy.Lee@cawgcap.org
San Francisco Bay Group 2 1st Lt Lynne Owen lynne.Owen@cawgcap.org
Inland Empire Group 3 Captain Joshua Ranziglia joshua.Ranzuglia@cawgcap.org
Central Coast Group 4 Lt Col Mike Mizner michael.Mizner@cawgcap.org
NorCal Group 5 Major Cynthia Sheldon cynthia.Sheldon@cawgcap.org
Central Valley Group 6 Major Christopher Ince christopher.ince@cawgcap.org
South Coast Group 7 Capt Ward Nickless edward.Nickless@cawgcap.org
San Diego Group 8 1st lt Isiah Gonzalez isiah.Gonzalez@cawgcap.org
 
Finally – another reminder for our Senior Only Cadet Program Planning Conference at Camp San Luis Obispo, CA on 6-8 September.
  • We will plan and resource our 2025 CAWG training calendar at this event, and conclude with a briefing to the CAWG Commander 
  • Seniors who are interested in leading or being the project officer for an event such as an NCOS, Drill and Ceremonies School,TLC, STEM event, etc, will be asked to join us that weekend as we plan and resource the event including scheduling on the wing calendar and RFMSS (as needed).

 

Thank you for all for the leadership and support you provide to the cadets of CAWG.  Our membership grew again in April 2024 to another record high of 2077 cadets (+25 cadets from March ’24).  Here is the April Strength update in detail for your review.

We will have Town Hall Meetings quarterly going forward, our next meeting will be in July (Invitation pending)

In service together!

– Wayne

 

Lt Col Wayne C. Brown

Greetings CAWG Cadet programs Officers;

Thanks to everyone who attended our first Town Hall meeting last week where we had over 70 team members join the Teams meeting and stay on for the entire time – Thank you!

As promised, the meeting recording, power point slides we used in the call, the detailed strength report and the Quality Cadet Unit Award (QCUA) tracker are on links to the right of this message.

I’d like to highlight a few important notes for our call and this last week:

  • California Wing Competition is scheduled for 10-12 May at Camp San Luis Obispo, CA.  Our Activity Director, Lt Col Michael Samuel is finalizing the staff assignments for this event, so a special thank you to the Seniors and Cadets who are helping to staff this event.  Col Newton will attend the Wing Competition and we hope to have a good showing for California Wing
  • Encampment ’24 registration is open and slots are filling up fast!  Space for first time students is limited, and registration will close on 15-May, so if there are cadets with the grade of C/TSgt and above in your unit, please encourage them to apply for encampment immediately at cawgcadets.org/enc24 while slots remain available.  The CAWG Encampment will sell out this year (like every year) and the next available opportunity will be the ORWG encampment in December.
  • All of our Group Cadet Programs Offered for CAWG are assigned and already engaged with the units of their groups.  Major Cherry will be seeing out Teams invitations for monthly meetings with the Group CPOs shortly.

For those of you who could not attend the meeting live, we have provided links to the following:

  • April Town Hall Meeting Recording
  • Meeting Power Point Slides
  • Quality Cadet Unit Award Status (QUCA)
  • CAWG Membership Status (Strength)

We will have Town Hall Meetings quarterly going forward, our next meeting will be in July (Invitation pending)

In service together!

– Wayne

 

Lt Col Wayne C. Brown

UPDATE – 25 APR 2024

Greetings CAWG Cadet Programs Officers;

 
Hoping this message finds you well and that you enjoyed a great Thanksgiving break.  It’s been a month since the CAWG Conference, and I wanted to follow up and bring everyone up to date on the recent developments in Cadet Programs for CAWG.
 
I’ll start by acknowledging the tremendous work and service of Lt Col Glenn Wiggins who completed four years as our Director on a strong note and was awarded CAP’s Exceptional Service Award for his performance as Director.  We are a stronger program because of Glenn’s leadership and  look forward to future collaborations and support from him. 
 
I mentioned a few of our new Cadet Programs Team in October and will to add some more names in this update but wanted to extend the invitation to the collective cadre of Cadet Programs Officers to join our team in a role, large or small, that you can contribute in.  More on this later in the update.  I’ll start by clarifying the organization of the team and reporting structure.  The Cadet Programs Team reports to the Deputy Chief of Staff, and that happens to be Capt James Hockel, super fortunate for us, as he is one of our strongest supporters.  
 
As you may have seen from the Duty Listing, we are building the team from the ground up and can announce several key assignments:
  • Deputy Directors are Major Rene McCoy, Major Lisa Cherry, and Captain Jagger Osseck
  • Encampment Commander is Major Steve Angus
  • Chief administrator and Finance is Major Paula Urbom-Shope   
  • Youth Aviation is Lt Col Robin Kim
  • IACE Coordinator for CAWG is Lt Col Tammy Sturgill
  • CWCAC Senior Advisor is Capt Andrew Hockel
Several other key positions are open including Adult Education Coordinator, QCUA Tracking Manager, Facilities Development Manager, just to name a few.  And this is in addition to the numerous opportunities for roles as NCOS, Cadet Competition, and other ILP leadership roles.  I can not emphasize enough that we all need to partner to offer the quantity and quality of programs for our cadets wing wide so please join in where and how you can.  I’ll assume most roles will be IAOD so you can participate in your home units weekly, but if you re interested now or later, please reach out!.
 
Now on to News and Program Updates:
  • 2024 Cadet Programs Conference scheduling is going to be an issue.  We are unlikely to get Camp San Luis Obispo for the traditional President’s Day Weekend this year due to new Cal Guard Scheduling rules on holiday weekends.  We are looking at alternative scheduling options and Capt Osseck will be publishing an update later this week.
  • 2024 Encampment will be scheduled for this summer at Camp Roberts, CA.  Our Encampment Commander, Major Angus is coordinating with the post for dates, and will announce the encampment dates as soon as possible.  Additionally, he will be looking for Senior Leaders for Encampment.  Please connect with Major Angus for more details
  • 2024 Cadet Competition is changing format this year with an emphasis on Region Competitions.  Additionally, California Wing will be the host facility for the 2024 Region Competition, so we will have both a Wing and a Region Competition to plan and are actively looking for a few more leaders to help with that endeavor.
  • I mentioned a Senior only Planning Conference.  We are actively working to schedule that event for Camp San Luis Obispo, CA in Calendar Q1 of 2024.  This weekend will grow to be an annual event where we set the agenda for the CAWG Cadet calendar for the following year.  We are getting a bit of a late start having it in Q1, but the minute we have the weekend set, the invitation will be sent so those interested in leading a wing activity can join. 
 
Group Cadet Program Officers:
  • As we start this journey for a new Cadet programs Team, I’m excited to hear that people are already starting to take on leadership roles as Group Cadet Program Officers!.  These leaders will have a tremendous impact on the success of our cadets and we have organized our Wing level leadership team to facilitate communications.  Major Lisa Cherry is taking on the role of Deputy Director for Outreach and will be the primary liaison with the Group Cadet Programs Officers.   Major Cherry has been a successful Squadron Commander and Group CPO for Group 8 and is the perfect person to coordinate the resources and communications to support the Group CPOs.  Look forward to regular updates and meetings scheduled by Major Cherry.
 
Follow up from Wing Conference / Ongoing Communications:
I’m attaching two presentations that were reviewed at Wing Conference for your review.  (Links below)
 
As mentioned in our opening meeting, our plan is to have regular communications to ensure the needs of the wing are met.  We’ll initially start with regular updates to all Cadet Program Officers via email and posting to our website, but we’ll work to expand that by including CPO focused Teams channels for targeted training resources that you may need.  As we grow the team, we’ll have regular Group CPO calls, and we’ll target town hall meetings on Teams where we can share the good news of the wing and have Q&A sessions.  Additionally, our Wing Commander Col Newton has stressed the importance of unit visitations by the Wing Level Cadet Programs team so we will make a concerted effort to visit as many squadron meetings as possible.  On a personal note, I’ll start with Group 2 first as I live in Gilroy, CA, but my daughter lives in Long Beach, CA and one of my sons live in Yolo County so I’m fielding invitations for Squadron visits in 2024!
 
Looking forward to working with everyone for the betterment of our Wing Cadet Program.
 
In Service Together,
 
-Wayne
Lt Col Wayne C. Brown

UPDATE – 27 NOV 2023