Georgia Southern University celebrates a legacy of more than 40 years as a host of the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps program. GS's ROTC has expanded to include the Armstrong Campus, and partnerships with Savannah State University and East Georgia State College.
With this expansion the Army professionals of the Eagle Battalion have remained committed to molding the cadets of the program into the future officers that lead the United States Army.
Lieutenant Colonel Nicholas Bingham now has the opportunity to help the battalion continue its success in this mission, by overseeing the program as its newest Professor of Military Science.
Introducing Lieutenant Colonel Nicholas Bingham
LTC Bingham enlisted in the Mississippi National Guard in 2001 and later attended the University of Mississippi, where he joined the ROTC program. Upon graduating in 2006, he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Army, branching as a Quartermaster.
From 2013 to 2017 he served as an Assistant Professor of Military Science with the Eagle Battalion. Upon completing this assignment, he was selected for Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, where he was promoted to Major. His subsequent assignments took him to Fort Carson, Colorado, and Fort Gregg-Adams, Virginia.
Before returning to Georgia Southern, LTC Bingham's most recent role was at Army Sustainment Command in Rock Island, Illinois, where he focused on equipping allied partners in the European theater. During this assignment, he was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and selected for battalion command.
Exploring more fitting roles, LTC Bingham reached out to Mrs. Allison Rainey, Senior Administrative Assistant for Eagle Battalion, and learned that the Professor of Military Science position would be available in the Fall 2024 semester. He returned to Georgia Southern this past August, eager to reconnect with the program and the warmer climate of Southeast Georgia. He is joined by his wife Tiffany Bingham, whose family is local to the area, and their now five year-old son.
LTC Bingham is committed to returning Georgia Southern’s ROTC program to the level of excellence it once held. His primary goal is to earn the prestigious MacArthur Award for cadet performance and commissioning mission success, a distinction the battalion has not received since 2016.
“That's my first goal, and I know that that's not an easy goal… It's more than just GPA right? It's also changing a culture of a program,” he said.
The upper MS levels were recently asked to provide feedback on these changes, though LTC Bingham said it will take the full academic year to truly asses the impact of the adjustment.
“We’ll adapt and change as need be," he said. “I think at that point we'll have some good ideas on shifts that we should make to improve, whether that be GPA, or whether that be improving ACFT scores, or competency in the MSIII class as they go off to summer camp,”
Looking ahead, LTC Bingham emphasizes the importance of evolving instruction based on feedback from Cadet Summer Training (CST) to better prepare lower-level cadets for their next phase in the program.
“There's nothing that says a freshman shouldn’t learn some of the things that a junior is learning… by the time they become an MSIII, they’ve already got at least a good backing or an understanding of what they're about to walk into,” he said.
Drawing from his Master Resilience Training (MRT), LTC Bingham is focused on fostering a positive, resilient mindset.
"Being positive, I think it's contagious. If you get up and you're excited about PT, I know it's hard because it's early in the morning, but if you're excited…you're going to get a lot more,” he said.
As the mission of Georgia Southern University's ROTC program is to prepare and commission the future leaders of the United States Army, LTC Bingham is committed to empowering the instructors, ensuring that this message of success is pushed throughout the battalion.
You can stay up to date on the Eagle Battalion’s newest developments and their latest service activities, fundraisers and cadet training through their Facebook Page, as well as through Georgia Southern’s Military Science webpage.