The Command and General Staff College has an established recognition program for published authors. The Golden Pen Award and the Order of the Iron Pen programs are both designed to inspire faculty and senior leader student writing resulting in authorship. These programs are in line with the Army’s Chief of Staff vision of making professional writing a top priority.
The Golden Pen Award Program and Order of the Iron Pen recognize the faculty and students from Command General Staff College four schools: Command and General Staff School, the School of Advanced Military Studies, the School for Command Preparation, and the Sergeants Major Academy who author published work in three writing categories:
- Gold for a book or series of articles of at least 40,000 words
- Silver for a chapter in a book or article of more than 2,000 words
- Bronze for an article of less than 2,000 words
Since inception of the Sergeants Major Academy faculty becoming eligible, below are the number of faculty recognized by academic year.
- Academic Year 2019/2020 –1 Silver Pen
- Academic Year 2020/2021 – 7 Bronze Pens
- Academic Year 2021/2022 –13 Bronze Pens
- Academic Year 2022/2023 – 13 Bronze Pens and 9 Silver Pens
- Academic Year 2023/2024 – 2 Silver Pens and 4 Bronze Pens
The Order of the Iron Pen is a method to recognize published student authors whose writings are the result of efforts pursued while assigned to one of the schools under Command and General Staff School. Since Sergeants Major Academy students have been eligible to take part in the recognition program, 65 students have earned the Order of the Iron Pen.
Locally, our Sergeants Major Academy staff encourages contributions to the body of knowledge relevant to the military profession by educating them on these recognition programs which could provide professional benefits Army-wide by encouraging improvements to the quality of scholarship and commitment of our military leaders.
Mark Froom, Department of Professional Studies Chair for the Sergeants Major Academy was recognized with a Silver Pen in 2024 for his authorship in the 21st Century Multinational Operations at the Siege of Yorktown, 1781 and hopes that his writing will encourage others to compose similar articles so that the Army’s story continues to be told.
After receiving his award during a distinguished service recognition ceremony Froom stated “I wrote the article to show the importance of studying military history, especially for noncommissioned officers. I hope who ever reads it will gain an appreciation for the history of our Army and glean a few lessons learned from Siege of Yorktown that can be applied today.”
Anyone interested in authorship and competing in any category should keep the below information in mind:
Articles published by students, whether independently or collaboratively co-authored with faculty or other author(s) as the result of work accomplished while assigned as a student at the
Sergeants Major Academy are eligible for award. Publication can occur after graduation.
- Sergeants Major Academy faculty will monitor the publication status of students assigned to their staff groups who are pursuing publication of articles and will inform their academic supervisor of the student's efforts.
- Sergeants Major Academy faculty, in collaboration with their academic supervisor, will determine worthiness of published articles for the Order of the Iron Pen. Nominations can occur at any time during the academic year or after, if the date of publication acceptance occurred while the author was a Sergeants Major Academy student.
- Regarding the Golden Pen Award category, two boards convene each academic year in April and October to consider writings published or accepted for publication in the previous twelve months.
- Making a submission is no guarantee of recognition. There is no requirement or expectation that committee members, chairs, or the Grade Point Average program manager provide authors feedback on why their submission was not recommended.
- Submissions must be by the author and not by their parent organization or a second party.