The Personal Initiative Domain of the CATO SWAT Operator Certification consists of one mandatory criterion and five electives. The mandatory criterion is an after-action review and the electives are a position paper, published article on subject, published an article on subject (peer-reviewed), literature review, or personal research. For further details and to see the point value of each see p. XXX of this manual. If the Board of Certification rejects an applicant’s submission, the applicant can resubmit with corrections. The grading criteria for submissions to the Personal Initiative Domain are as follows:

Content – Lack of content will result in a minimum 20-point deduction. Lack of content could also result in rejection of the applicant’s submission. For example, an after-action review that does not contain lessons learned will be rejected.

Spelling – 1 point will be deducted for each spelling error

Grammar – 2 points will be deducted for each grammar error

Citations – Citations not presented in an acceptable academic or scientific format will result in a 2-point deduction. Lack of citing source material will result in a 5-point deduction.

Coherence – Lack of coherence will result in a 15-point deduction