{"id":18617,"date":"2015-10-28T21:04:25","date_gmt":"2015-10-28T21:04:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/marinecorpstimes\/uncategorized\/2015\/10\/28\/retired-gunny-honored-for-completing-439-mci-courses\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T20:26:26","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T20:26:26","slug":"retired-gunny-honored-for-completing-439-mci-courses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/marinecorpstimes\/news\/your-marine-corps\/2015\/10\/28\/retired-gunny-honored-for-completing-439-mci-courses\/","title":{"rendered":"Retired gunny honored for completing 439 MCI courses"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>\u00a0<br\/><br\/>A retired <span class=\"rte rte-comment\">G<\/span>\u200bgunny has gone on record as being the most-Marine-Corps-Institute-educated devil dog of all time.<br\/><br\/>By his account, retired Gunnery Sgt.<span class=\"rte rte-comment\">\u00a0(ret.)<\/span>\u200b\u00a0Andrew\u00a0Svaby completed a total 439 courses at MCI, 317 before his 1997 retirement from the Corps, giving him bragging rights for the record of most courses completed by any Marine \u2014 ever.\u00a0<span class=\"rte rte-comment\">Retired Gunnery Sgt. (ret.) Andrew J. <\/span>\u200bSvaby was honored at the MCI deactivation ceremony at Marine Barracks Washington Oct. 1 with a Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal for his volunteer efforts to mentor young Marines and his prolific completion of MCI courses.<br\/><br\/>&#8220;You need book Marines as well as field Marines,&#8221; Svaby told Marine Corps Times. &#8220;I wanted to lead by example: If I could do it, so can you.&#8221;<br\/><br\/>Of the 439 MCI courses Svaby completed, his favorites were Warfighting Skills, Fundamentals of Leadership, and Command and Staff \u2014 an upper-level course for officers.<br\/><br\/>Even though\u00a0he became an MCI expert of sorts, not\u00a0all of the\u00a0courses were a cake walk. Svaby failed an artillery military occupational specialty course twice. Seeing it as a personal challenge, he took it a third time and finally passed.\u00a0<br\/><br\/>After retiring, Svaby sought to pass on his life-long passion for learning to young Marines.<br\/><br\/>He said for the past 18 years, he\u2019s put about 50,000 miles a year driving from his hometown of Allentown, Pennsylvania, to Quantico, Virginia, to volunteer his time mentoring and instructing them through MCI courses, as well as coordinating with MCI staff as their advocate.<br\/><br\/>MCI\u2019s deactivation, however, will mark a new chapter in Svaby\u2019s life.<br\/><br\/>&#8220;It\u2019s bittersweet: I\u2019ve met some good people along the way, but I understand the need to move forward,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It\u2019s an Internet world, and with all the talk about counting beans, [MCI\u2019s] gone the way of the typewriter and the horse and buggy.&#8221;<br\/><br\/>Since first opening its doors in 1920 under the aegis of Maj. Gen. John <span class=\"rte rte-comment\">A. <\/span>\u200bLejeune to support Marine Barracks Washington, approximately 15.5 million Marines received professional military education through MCI.<br\/><br\/>Last spring, MCI converted its long-distance learning from its red course books \u2014 once synonymous with the institute \u2014 to a purely online format in an effort to cut costs<span class=\"rte rte-comment\"> save money for the Corps<\/span>\u200b.<br\/><br\/><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"151001-M-YG412\" data-alignment=\"center\" data-object-id=\"00000155-ce81-db05-ab7f-ef93973a0000\" data-type=\"image\" src=\"http:\/\/snagfilms-a.akamaihd.net\/cc\/a0\/d52715844b3fb1a0637263a4637e\/635811513865020543-151001-m-yg412-148jpg\"\/><figcaption> <span>Marine Corps Institute\u2019s company commander and senior enlisted adviser case the colors during a deactivation ceremony at Marine Barracks Washington on Oct. 1. The institute was deactivated as a result of budget cuts.<\/span><\/figcaption><figcaption> <span>Photo Credit: Lance Cpl. Christian Varney\/Marine Corps<\/span><\/figcaption>Its content was transferred to MarineNet, run by the Marine Corps University College of Distance Education and Learning, before MCI permanently closed its doors this fall.<br\/><br\/>&#8220;With budget cuts coming around &#8230; <span class=\"rte rte-comment\">, our program was rolled into the budget review last year, and <\/span>\u200bwe had to look at different courses of action where we wanted to go,&#8221; Lt. Col. Brian Taylor, former commanding officer of MCI Company at Marine Barracks Washington, told Marine Corps Times in April.\u00a0&#8220;Looking at that, cutting the budget, [deactivating MCI] really was the right thing to do.&#8221;<br\/><br\/>Svaby enlisted in the Corps in 1972. He served two years on active duty before switching to a Reserve unit in his home state of Pennsylvania, where he became its training and education staff noncommissioned officer.<br\/><br\/>His original MOS \u2014 <span class=\"rte rte-comment\">9915 <\/span>\u200bspecial assignment, enlisted \u2014 was an undefined &#8220;reporting MOS&#8221; that <span class=\"rte rte-comment\">which <\/span>\u200ballowed him to join under an open contract and select his MOS later.<br\/><br\/>&#8220;I held 11 different MOSs over my career: admin, [motor transport]<span class=\"rte rte-comment\">MotorT<\/span>\u200b, communications, food service, mobility \u2026\u00a0you name it, I did it,&#8221; Svaby said.<br\/><br\/>His favorite job, he said, was recruiting, which he did from 1989 to 1991.<br\/><br\/>Svaby said that being flexible ensured there was never a billet that needed to be filled in his <span class=\"rte rte-comment\">r<\/span>\u200bReserve unit\u2019s table of organization. He could simply attend a two-week refresher course to become MOS-qualified, and the unit would never hurt for bodies.<br\/><br\/>Despite MCI\u2019s closing, Svaby said, the need for professional military education will only increase.<br\/><br\/>&#8220;A smaller military only means PME will be the tie-breaker when it comes to promotion,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Don\u2019t wait for the breaks, you make the breaks: Learn to budget your time and spend time in the library.&#8221;<br\/><br\/>Now that he won\u2019t be making long-haul drives on a regular basis, Svaby said he\u2019ll continue volunteer\u00a0work closer to home.<br\/><br\/>In addition to tutoring local Hispanic high school students in English as a second language and serving as the armed forces chair on the local chapter of the National Association of for the Advancement of Colored People, he said he also mentors Reserve Officer Training Corps cadets at Montclair State University in Montclair, New Jersey.<br\/><br\/>&#8220;It\u2019s time to drop my pack,&#8221; Svaby said. &#8220;I just want to give back to the community what the military gave me for the past 42 years.&#8221;\u00a0<br\/><br\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cYou need book Marines as well as field Marines. I wanted to lead by example: If I could do it, so can you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":41929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":69,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[12,69],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1080],"class_list":["post-18617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-your-marine-corps"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"BM4QWOKRQBAZPMXGDBEG6YTQCM","arc_canonical_url":"\/news\/your-marine-corps\/2015\/10\/28\/retired-gunny-honored-for-completing-439-mci-courses\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.0 (Yoast SEO v28.1) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Retired gunny honored for completing 439 MCI courses - Marine Corps Times<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"\u201cYou need book Marines as well as field Marines. 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