A-100 Class - History

History

In function, if not name, the A-100 Class dates back to June 7, 1924, when President Coolidge issued Executive Order 4022 establishing a Foreign Service School for the purpose of training newly-hired probationary Foreign Service Officers (FSOs). The Foreign Service School's first class was conducted from April 20 - September 1, 1925, and "graduated" a class of 17.

According to tradition, the "100" in A-100 refers to the number of the room in which the course was first conducted. The State Department's 1926 Telephone Directory confirms that the Foreign Service School was located in Room 100 of the State, War, and Navy Building.

Additional details can be found in Ambassador Ellis O. Briggs' autobiography: "Proud Servant: The Memoirs of a Career Ambassador." Ambassador Briggs recounts his experiences in preparing for the 1925 Foreign Service examination—the written and oral tests that were instituted after the Rogers Act of 1924 established the Foreign Service as "a competitive, nonpolitical, professional career." Ambassador Briggs says that "simultaneously there came into existence in the Department of State, in Room 100 on the ground floor of the old State War Navy Building, a modest enterprise called the Foreign Service School." He goes on to explain that, in order to provide new officers with an initial "home office indoctrination" and avoid the problems that might result if officers' initial training was entirely entrusted to overseas supervisors whose quality and interest level "varied from post to post," it was decided to organize "a course of several months in the State Department before a new officer was sent to his first foreign assignment." Ambassador Briggs concludes that "until after World War II, the Foreign Service School remained an unpretentious institution, concentrating on unraveling consular regulations and language instruction."

With the Foreign Service Act of 1946 a new Foreign Service training program, patterned after programs in the Army and Navy, came into existence. The newly established Foreign Service Institute (FSI) included a "School of Basic Officer Training" (with classes distinguished by the letter "B" preceding a three-digit course number). An "A" prefix was used to identify courses administered by the separate "School of Advanced Officer Training." FSI's 1949 Course Catalog includes "B 100" -- a basic training course prescribed for all newly appointed Foreign Service officers. The separate "A 100" course involved three months of intensive training for Foreign Service officers following the successful conclusion of their probationary years in the field.

By 1955, however, these separate schools had been eliminated. In the 1955-56 FSI course catalog the training programs for junior, mid-level and senior level officers are all found under the heading of "General Career Training." The B-100 course had vanished, but A-100 survived as the 3-month "Junior Foreign Service Officers' Course" which was "required of all newly appointed Foreign Service officers of class 6 before assignment to their first post abroad."