Henrietta Man Named Commander of Army ROTC at RIT

Donald Beattie Leads Tiger Battalion, 1st Brigade

Note: Digital photograph available

Lt. Col. Donald Beattie Jr., professor and chair of military science in the U.S. Army Reserve Officer Training Corps at Rochester Institute of Technology, has been named commander of Army ROTC’s Tiger Battalion, 1st Brigade, at RIT.

Beattie, 43, of Henrietta, came to RIT from Arizona State University in Tempe, where he was assistant professor of military science. He joined the Army in 1979 and was stationed in Germany. He was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant from Canisius College in 1986. He has also been deployed in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

A native of the Catskill Mountains region, Beattie earned a bachelor’s degree from Buffalo State College in 1986 and a master’s degree in education from the University of Colorado in 1993. He is a graduate of the Military Intelligence Officers Basic and Advanced Courses, the Combined Armed Service Staff School and the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College.

Beattie replaced Lt. Col. Daniel Stafford, professor of military science, who retired after 24 years of military service, the last four as commander of Tiger Battalion, 1st Brigade. Stafford, who received a Meritorious Service Award from the Army upon his retirement, remains at RIT as assistant dean in the B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences.

This year is the 35th anniversary of the establishment of Army ROTC at RIT. Army ROTC and Air Force ROTC at RIT are part of the university’s College of Applied Science and Technology, the college of innovation.