The Marine Corps is taking applications for the fourth class of its artificial intelligence fellowship, a program that asks Marines to bring a real problem from their own command and build a tool to fix it. Stars and Stripes covered it this week, and the details come from MARADMIN 471/26.
How the fellowship works
It's a five-month program run with faculty at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Fellows mostly work from their home units and travel to Monterey three times. While they're in the program, the fellowship is their primary duty. Each applicant proposes an unclassified project that their command endorses and identifies the data they'll need. To graduate, fellows have to write a publishable research paper.
The program started as a pilot in August 2025. According to the Marine Corps, past projects have tackled cybersecurity testing, maintenance paperwork and mismatches between financial and logistics records. Those aren't flashy problems. They're the ones that eat hours every week in every unit.
Who can apply
Eligible applicants include officers up to O-5, enlisted Marines E-4 through E-8, warrant officers, and civilian employees GS-5 through GS-14. Units cover about $5,000 in travel, and military participants take on a 15-month active-duty service obligation. The Corps usually picks three to eight fellows per class.
Why this one caught my eye
The best fixes in any unit come from the people closest to the problem. Corporals and sergeants know exactly where the friction is, whether it's a form that gets filled out three times or a report nobody trusts. A program that gives an E-4 time and mentorship to fix it is a smart use of talent. If you're still in and you've been complaining about the same broken process for a year, this might be your shot to do something about it.
Sources: Stars and Stripes · MARADMINs, Marines.mil
