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Fostering Strong Leadership Skills and Character Development

VMI's Center for Leadership and Ethics is dedicated to educating, engaging, and inspiring cadets, faculty, and staff in leadership and character development. Our mission is to share the insights and knowledge gleaned from our programs with a wider national audience. We offer programming that falls into three broad categories: Cadet Programs, Leader Development, and Strategic Engagement. These categories provide opportunities to develop new skills and enhance leadership learning, empowering leaders to think critically, solve problems, and make ethical decisions.

Cadet Programs

Cadet Programs are designed to engage and inspire members of the Corps of Cadets. We offer several programs that incorporate experiential learning, critical thinking, and opportunities to engage with nationally-known speakers and subject-matter experts.

Leader Development

Our Center conducts progressive professional development programs and workshops to enhance interpersonal, teaching, and leadership skills. One of our most notable programs is VMI’s required core curriculum leadership course - LEAD 344, which is now led by Col. David R. Gray, Ph. D.

Strategic Engagement

Our Strategic Engagement programs involve outside professionals, subject-matter experts, and leading practitioners as speakers during one of VMI’s conferences or as part of one of our speaker series programs.

2025-25 Annual Leadership Theme: Paradigm Shift

Rapid and shifting changes in the international and national order are causing paradigm shifts within American society.

Our programs, speaker events, and social media content will explore three important ones that are challenging the social order:

• Global wars and terrorist activities disrupting the current world order;
• Cultural change created by the generational swing from Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers to a predominance of Millennials and Gen Zs;
• Widespread use and impact of digital technologies, especially in social media and artificial intelligence.

These paradigm shifts challenge how leaders interact with and influence their followers to achieve goals. Dealing with paradigm shifts necessitates leaders who are authentic and ethically grounded, understand how to manage the organizational change curve, and are intellectually, morally, and physically resilient. Center programs and social media content will highlight paradigm shifts throughout the academic year. We invite you to participate in these opportunities wherever feasible!

Our strategic outreach efforts during conferences, speaker events, the VMI Leader Journey podcast, and on social media with the hashtag #adaptiveleadership. The Annual Leadership and Ethics Conference, to be held Oct. 30-31, will highlight the challenges of adapting to personal and organizational crises with courage and integrity. These programs reinforce VMI’s Unifying Action Plan five outcomes with content that educates, engages, and inspires!

Follow us online for this content and other programming announcements on our , , , or  accounts.

Past Leadership Themes:

• Adapting to Complex Situations
• The Courage of Convictions
• Citizen Leaders
• Leadership in a Fractured World
• Courageous Leadership

The VMI Leader Journey Pamphlet

The “VMI Leader Journey” pamphlet describes how the Institute turns leadership theory into practice through a systematic approach over a four-year cadetship experience of whole-person development. it provides an easy-to-share reference guide of VMI's academic, athletic, and military environment programming, along with the single-sanction Honor system as its seat of character development.  

The pamphlet was developed over four years and 15 drafts with input from VMI administration, faculty, staff, cadets, board of visitors, and alumni. It includes an overview of the Institute's mission and philosophy, as well as a discussion of the theoretical basis for training cadets into adaptable, authentic leaders. Finally, the pamphlet discusses the specifics of the integration of curricular, co-curricular, and experiential learning opportunities essential for instilling character and core leader behaviors.

Links to Resources