Honorary Consul Training Program
The Honorary Consul Training Program is an online course of instruction created to train and educate Westarctica's diplomats. It is part of the Westarctica Leadership Institute.
Graduates of the program are entitled to apply for entry into the Diplomatic Corps and may be selected as Honorary Consuls for Westarctica.
History
The Honorary Consul Training Program was created using the online education platform OpenLearning in April 2016. The primary materials used to write the instruction modules included:
- 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (United Nations)
- Protocol for the Modern Diplomat (Foreign Service Institute U.S. Department of State)
- The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of Westarctica (Westarctica)
Graduates were presented with an auto-generated certificate. Once they could show proof of successfully completing the course, they became eligible to serve as Honorary Consuls of Westarctica.
2022 shut down
In 2022, OpenLearning increased their fee for hosting platform content from $90 per year to over $5,000 per year. It was decided at this time that this increased expense was not justifiable, and the program was shuttered. Shannon Sullivan, then serving as Chancellor of the Westarctica Leadership Institute, was instructed by Grand Duke Travis to copy and paste all content from the course so it could be reconstituted on another platform. She failed in this endeavor and the content was lost forever on 28 February 2022 when Westarctica's OpenLearning account was shut down.
After this, the training program for new consuls was abandoned.
New program
In 2025, the Deputy Foreign Minister, Captain Chris Watson, took responsibility for administering the Honorary Consul Program. In this capacity, he created new training materials which would be shared with candidates who had been vetted and selected for diplomatic service. This marked a dramatic change from the way the training program was previously administered: before, the training and testing process was open to anyone who desired to complete it; now, it is available only to candidates who have been deemed eligible Honorary Consuls.
External links
- Online training course (dead link)