RIT’s Army ROTC gets new commander

Michael Sim, an Army lieutenant colonel who was previously stationed in Ft. Drum in Watertown, N.Y., taught at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and most recently in Italy for NATO, has been selected to lead RIT’s Army ROTC program.

As the ROTC department chair and professor of military science, Sim is responsible for about 70 Army cadets studying at RIT.

“I’m super excited for the opportunity,” he said. “My goal is to commission leaders of character who are physically tough, emotionally resilient, and have a strong foundation of skills, knowledge, and behavior who can lead well. Our primary weapon system is not a plane or a ship. It is young leaders we rely on to lead soldiers who win our wars. The tools that we give our students are tools that will serve them for the rest of their lives.”

A native of New York City, Sim was an undergraduate studying political science and sociology at New York University when the World Trade Center was attacked in 2001.

“There was a great sense of unity at the time,” he said.  After finishing his undergraduate degree, he entered law school and joined the ROTC.

“Growing up, I’d always had an interest in the military, but I was never really pushed to do anything with that interest. It wasn’t until 9/11 that the idea of serving became more important to me.”

Although he didn’t work in the legal field, he highly values his educational experience while earning his degree as well as the profession, including Army lawyers.

“I benefitted greatly from it, and I wouldn’t change any of it,” he said of his circuitous path to the military. “I got into the Army a few years older, but I felt more prepared for the emotional rigors that went with it.”

His military path included stints at the former Ft. Hood in Texas (now named Ft. Cavazos) with a deployment to Iraq, Ft. Sill in Oklahoma, and with the Army’s 10th Mountain Division Ft. Drum in Watertown, N.Y., with two deployments to Afghanistan. He received his master’s degree in national defense and strategic studies at the U.S. Naval War College in 2018 and worked as an assistant professor of military science at MIT from 2015 to 2017.

“That introduced me into the instructor side of things,” Sim said. “I fell in love being in the classroom and being a teacher.”

In 2022, he was assigned as a planner to the NATO Rapid Deployable Corps, near Milan, Italy, working on high-level exercises on a multinational staff.

He and his wife, Natalie, now call Henrietta, N.Y., their home. He looks forward to hiking in the summer, skiing in the winter, and his new responsibilities at RIT.

“It’s exciting to watch our cadets grow from being brand-new students to brand-new lieutenants going out in the Army,” Sim said. “It’s a tremendous honor.”