Center for Leadership and Ethics

Home | Center for Leadership and Ethics

Fostering Strong Leadership Skills and Character Development

American Values with graphic design featuring the American Flag and bald eagle and photos of cadets

VMI’s Center for Leadership and Ethics (CLE) is dedicated to educating, engaging, and inspiring cadets, faculty, and staff in the development of leadership and character. Our mission is to share the insights and knowledge gleaned from our programs with a wider national audience. We offer programming in three lines of effort: 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 for the Corps

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.

2025-26 Annual Leadership Theme: American Values

The Center for Leadership and Ethics’ programming will join the Commonwealth of Virginia in celebrating the events leading up to the United States’ 250th anniversary of its independence. Highlighting the character of our Founders, the Center’s annual theme will focus on “American Values.” Throughout the year, programming will reinforce the shared democratic core values, stressing honor, service to country, and integrity.

Our strategic outreach efforts include conferences, speaker events, civil discourse programs, the VMI Leader Journey podcast, and social media, utilizing the hashtag #AmericanValues. The annual Leadership and Ethics Conference, to be held from October 27 to 28, will focus specifically on “Leading with Integrity,” grounded in the principles of ethical 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.