A third female student has completed the rigorous US army ranger school course, officials confirmed. Major Lisa Jaster, a 37-year-old engineer and mother of two, will graduate along with 87 men on Friday, the Washington Post reported.
Captain Kristen Griest, 26, and Lieutenant Shaye Haver, 25, are the other women among a group of 19 that began in April to successfully complete ranger school.
Ranger school is the US army’s “premier combat leadership course”, according to a press release from the Maneuver Center of Excellence Public Affairs Office.
The course contains tests including “49 push-ups, 59 sit-ups, a five-mile run in 40 minutes and six chin-ups; a swim test; a land navigation test; a 12-mile foot march in three hours; several obstacle courses; four days of military mountaineering; three parachute jumps; four air assaults on helicopters; multiple rubber boat movements; and 27 days of mock combat patrols”.
Jaster and the other 19 women who enrolled did so after the army opened the course to women for the first time, as it considered how to integrate women into combat roles.
Jaster will have spent 180 days on the 62-day course upon her graduation, according to the press release. Ranger school, which consists of three phases, allows students to repeat portions if they fall just short of passing. The practice, called “recycling”, was used by Jaster, Griest and Haver during the first phase of training. Jaster also recycled in the second and third phases.
According to the press release, Jaster “met the standards of the course by proficiently leading combat patrols at the squad and platoon levels in multiple terrain environments”.
Jaster was a captain in the army for seven years before she left active duty in 2007 and began working for Shell. Her LinkedIn profile lists her current jobs as a catalogue project delivery engineer with Shell and a reserve army engineer.
Since the announcement of her graduation, she has been widely praised for not just completing the course but for doing so at the age of 37.
“I just think it’s phenomenal for her to do this at that age,” Terron Sims II, a former army captain who graduated from West Point with Jaster in 2000, told the Washington Post. “Forget gender. Her willingness to sacrifice at that age is just phenomenal and speaks a lot about her.”
Andrew Exum, a deputy assistant secretary of defense who served as a Ranger, tweeted on Sunday: “Forget the fact she’s a woman. I can’t believe a 37-year old graduated from Ranger School. I’m 37. I went when I was 22. 37 is oooooold.”
