Honors Week – Virginia Military Institute

Honors Week: Exploring Global Rivalries and Climate Change

During VMI’s annual Honors Week, Earl Filgo ’25 presented research that bridges global strategic competition and climate change.

Filgo, an international studies major with minors in national security and Arabic, plans to commission into the U.S. Army as a military intelligence officer after graduating this spring. His presentation, “Strategic Rivalry and its Implications for Climate Change Mitigation,” brings together his academic interests and his drive to confront complex global challenges.

“I chose this topic because of my interest in international relations theory, its ties to national security, and my concern over climate change,” Filgo said. “Climate change deserves more scrutiny outside the scientific community, especially from those studying security and diplomacy.”

His thesis explores how rivalry between states affects their willingness to cooperate on global environmental initiatives. The research required a hybrid of qualitative and quantitative methods, evolving over time as Filgo engaged more deeply with data and theory.

“Initially, I thought it would be mostly qualitative,” he said, “but as I progressed, I realized how powerful quantitative research could be for this topic.”

Filgo found the thesis process to be intensive.

“It takes time, loads of time,” he said. “You need to understand different theories and studies, then link them together into one cohesive project. It’s not enough to have a great research question. You need solid data to back it up.”

Filgo’s advisor, Col. Patrick Rhamey, observed Filgo’s growth throughout the process.

“Once he got started, he showed initiative and diligence,” Rhamey said. “He learned to work with limited and sometimes poorly coded data, using both statistical software and theoretical frameworks to produce a well-rounded study.”

Rhamey highlighted the relevance of Filgo’s work for the VMI community. “His research connects global environmental priorities with military spending, a subject directly tied to the paths many of our cadets pursue.”

“I gained credibility and confidence in my research skills, and a way to show my capabilities to future employers,” he said about how the experience expanded his academic and practical skill set. “It’s a burden, but also an exciting challenge not many cadets get to experience.”

Honors Week: Cadet Completes Work on App

Parents of newborns often struggle to understand the needs of their baby. How often should they eat? How long should they sleep? How does one know if they are sick? So, it isn’t unusual for parents of babies with hearing impairments to be confused. Col. James Squire, professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Military Institute, was faced with that very issue 25 years ago when his oldest son was born and diagnosed with a hearing disorder.

Squire’s first thought as a new parent was, “What was the world like that he was experiencing?” Squire and his wife were given an audiogram, but they didn’t know what it meant. Thankfully, his son’s hearing disorder was a misdiagnosis, but it inspired Squire to begin research to help young parents of children with hearing loss. “I thought it would make a good honors project for cadets. I was wrong. It made a terrible single honors project, but it made three really good honors projects because there was so much background work with theoretical development, open-source work, working with audiologists, and figuring out how to get programs that could be used practically by the audiology community.”

Work on the project has spanned over nine years and began with Will Flathers ’09, who primarily focused on filtering audio. Binh Tran ’23 continued with the project and created an open-source sampling frequency filter. Tran won an award for his contribution at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Southeast Regional Conference two years ago.

Cole Bowyer ’25, who took up the mantle as the third honors student to work on the endeavor, placed the capstone on the project in his presentation, “Audiogram Emulator,” a free app available to parents that allows them to hear as their child hears.

Bowyer explained that roughly 9,000 children are born each year in the United States with some type of hearing impairment, and only half of those children receive treatment.

“If a child does not receive any treatment before the age of 1, it’s shown to significantly hurt his ability to learn in the education system and keep up with his peers,” he said.

Why do parents not seek treatment? Bowyer believes there are several reasons. “For one, parents do not want a label attached to their child. Second, often the child can hear sounds and react, so his parents think he is hearing properly, but he’s not. Since his hearing is impaired, he is not receiving a true understanding of what is being said. And third, parents may not understand hearing loss and its ramifications.”

In his research, Bowyer consulted with many professionals in their respective field including Lindsey Richard, Au.D., CCC-A, educational audiologist at The Virginia School for the Deaf and the Blind in Staunton. “She provided helpful feedback on how to improve the app. Without her, I don’t think that we would have been able to make the best possible app.”

Squire and the three cadets who developed the app have no intention of profiting from their work. “We want it easily assessable and free to parents so they will fully grasp how their child hears, and increase the chances of the child getting medical help,” stated Bowyer. The app can be downloaded from the Squire’s website.

Bowyer will present the project at the IEEE Southeast Regional Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina. His hope in the future is that the app will be commonly used by audiologists and other medical professionals

Bowyer is an electrical and computer engineering major from Daleville, Virginia, where he attended Lord Botetourt High School. He is the son of Tara Tice and Sheldon Bowyer. Following graduation, he will work for AECOM in Roanoke.

Honors Week: Analyzing U.S. – China Conflict Asymmetries

John Kennedy ’25 used his Virginia Military Institute Honors Week presentation to tackle how asymmetries between the United States and China shape the potential for conflict in his thesis titled, “Asymmetries Between the U.S. and China in the Context of Conflict.”

Kennedy, an economics and business major, will marry after graduation and commissioning, before heading to Fort Moore for infantry officer training.

“I started VMI the same week Abbey Gate was bombed during the Afghanistan withdrawal,” Kennedy said. “That moment made it clear to many of us that peace isn’t guaranteed. I wanted to examine what future conflict could actually look like, especially with China.”

Kennedy focused his research on China’s conventional military capabilities, strategic doctrine, and economic leverage.

“Public rhetoric makes China seem like a looming military threat,” he said. “But my research suggests that their economic power may be the more serious concern.”

“Cadet Kennedy has done a remarkable job of taking a very large topic and reducing it to its bare bones,” Col. Atin Basuchoudhary, Kennedy’s faculty advisor, said. “He has combined various elements of his learning experience to answer his thesis question.”

The thesis process began during Kennedy’s 2nd Class year with topic selection and continued through a series of formal submissions. Most of his work was done this spring.

“I spent about three hours a week on it, mostly reading and refining ideas,” he said. “The Rat Line made it tough to make real progress last fall.”

Kennedy says he’s gained both insight and perspective through the process of his thesis.

“This research helped me think critically about the reality behind the headlines,” he said. “It’s easy to be alarmed by military posturing, but understanding the economic side gives you a fuller picture.”

Kennedy also acknowledged the importance of mentorship throughout the project.

“I want to thank Colonel Basuchoudhary and Colonel [Spencer] Bakich for their guidance,” he said. “Their support helped make this project possible.”

Honors Week: Cadet Explores Democracy in African Monarchies

Jonah Jurack ’25 spent the summer before his 3rd Class year at Virginia Military Institute studying abroad in Morocco. Jurack was drawn to the unique perspective of non-democratic governments, sparking the beginning of what would become his senior thesis.

For Jurack, an international studies major, his first experience outside the United States raised important questions about how U.S. citizens perceive democratization efforts in non-democratic nations.

“It was fascinating to see how the Moroccan people addressed King Mohammed VI,” said Jurack. “He was widely venerated, and it was frowned upon to critique him in public.”

That experience fueled a broader interest in the Middle East and North Africa, ultimately leading Jurack to his Honors Week presentation titled “Institutional Heritage and Satisfaction with Democratic Practices in African Monarchies: Evidence from Eswatini, Lesotho, and Morocco.”

His research asked what factors explain citizen satisfaction with democratic practices in autocratic monarchies.

Jurack challenged conventional understandings of governance in allied monarchies, an important consideration when evaluating U.S. foreign policy and democracy promotion abroad.

“I started planning my thesis in the spring of my 3rd Class year,” Jurack said. “I spent five weeks this past summer working with my advisor on my quantitative data through the Summer Undergraduate Research Institute.”

Jurack employed quantitative analysis using advanced statistical techniques to explore his topic in depth. He worked under the guidance of Dr. Salih Yasun, assistant professor in the Department of International Studies and Political Science.

“Cadet Jurack’s research is valuable because it illuminates how authoritarian regimes—some of which are America’s closest allies—strive to ensure their survival by employing quasi-democratic methods to elicit different forms of engagement from their citizens,” Yasun said.

Yasun, who first worked with Jurack in a Middle East politics course, said he developed his thesis largely on his own, seeking guidance only when necessary. He described Jurack’s continued academic growth, noting improvements in theory-building, data analysis, and integrating findings within broader political discussions.

“I am confident that Cadet Jurack has a bright future and will make valuable contributions to his surroundings, including his country,” Yasun said. “Honors Week has been a great event showcasing the critical and, indeed, cutting-edge research conducted by cadets here at VMI.”

Jurack plans to commission into the U.S. Army as an infantry officer after graduation. He said the research process has strengthened his critical thinking, sharpened his analytical skills, and taught him the value of persistence. He believes these qualities will serve him well in his military career.

Honors Week: Tavenner Performs Stellar Research

Cassiopeia is a constellation in the northern sky named after a Greek mythological queen. Its distinctive “W” shape formed by its five brightest stars, makes the constellation easily recognizable. In the center of the “W” is the star, Gamma Cassiopeia, which Brian Tavenner ’25 researched for his honors thesis, “Polarization and Interstellar Extinction in the Vicinity of the Star Gamma Cassiopeia.”

Polarization of starlight, first observed in 1949, is when the star’s energy travels through space in just one direction instead of random patterns. Interstellar extinction refers to the dimming of starlight, making the distant objects appear fainter and redder. Both polarization and extinction are due to dust and gas particles.

Tavenner’s work at the VMI Observatory at McKethan Park was enjoyable but limited due to the telescope needing repairs. Using other tools and computer programing, he was able to deduce that the region of space he analyzed is most likely filled with emission line stars, that is stars with material around it that can influence its measured polarization. He recommends that more cadets continue his research to discover the reason for his conclusions.

According to Tavenner’s advisor, Col. Gregory Topasna, professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, the project had several moving parts.

“Brian worked diligently to see everything to completion. Obtaining the images was a little more complicated than usual since the telescope needed repairing, but he was able to image a region that has stars with interesting characteristics. The fact that there is a concentration of emission stars northwest of Gamma Cassiopeia is very interesting and worth following up on. Before graduation, I’m hoping Brian can rustle up a cadet who wants to extend his work. He also knew LaTeX, a typesetting routine that is heavily used by astronomers when writing papers,” he said.

Tavenner submitted his research to the European Astronomical Society in hopes that it will be presented in poster form at the annual general meeting in June at University College Cork in Ireland.

Tavenner is an electrical and computer engineering major from North Prince George, Virginia. He is a graduate of Midlothian High School, and the son of Andrea and James Tavenner. Following graduation, he plans to work with an engineering firm in Richmond.

Honors Week: Cadet Researches AI as a Hiring Manager

Artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere. From health care to finance, transportation, customer service, and manufacturing. Many people rely on AI without really realizing it for their smartphones and smart home devices. But is AI as reliable and accurate as humans in all cases? Jude Roberts ’25, a cadet at Virginia Military Institute, sought to find the answer in his honors presentation, “Assessing the Efficacy of an LLM for Resume Selection and Human Talent Management.”

Roberts, a computer science major from Cloverdale, Virginia, was introduced to AI research when he interned at the U.S. Army Cyber Command at Fort Eisenhower, Georgia, last summer. For his honors project, he conducted an experiment looking at business hiring processes using the AI program, ChatGPT, specifically the GPT-4o mini, a cost-efficient small model. He explained that people generally believe that time efficiency and lower costs are a huge upside to automation. “If a company doesn’t have to pay an employee to look through a lot of resumés, it frees their staff’s time to focus on more high-level strategic tasks. Sometimes ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs)—software designed to generate human-like, conversational language—provides completely nonsensical, out of context, or just wrong information, known as hallucinations, which is problematic.” Roberts continued to point out that because there is no human interaction to evaluate a potential employee’s interpersonal and character traits, AI may show a bias based solely on particular words appearing on a resumé. “Some of us very soon will be applying for our first jobs and we want a fair shot at the hiring process. What I’m examining here is whether AI is consistently capable of selecting the best applicants for jobs,” he explained.

Roberts took 1,000 resumés and instructed ChatGPT that it was taking on the role of a hiring manager, and it was to consider the applicants’ skills, experiences, and qualifications, and choose the applicant that best fills the job role. Categories included data science, arts, web design, and engineering. An additional category, not applicable (N/A), was designated for any resumé data that contained nonsensical or misleading information or that did not match any of the categories.

Roberts found that AI was less accurate and less reliable than a human hiring manager in finding the best candidate, and he determined that the LLM was vulnerable to malicious interference and bias propagation. “These are very concerning aspects for the reliability of these models, and administrators should be concerned about these issues when implementing this technology. Hiring managers should never solely rely on the technology to automate any portion of resumé screening.”

Sherif Abdelhamid, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences and outreach liaison officer for the Cyber Defense Laboratory, served as Roberts’ advisor on the project. Abdelhamid noted Roberts’ exceptional skills of problem solving, ability to work in a team, and analytical skills. “I see him as a unique, special student. He was able to independently identify the research problem and objectives, and came up with a unique design for his research. He carefully and critically studied how LLMs can impact our lives, and identified their benefits and drawbacks,” said Abdelhamid.

Roberts, who is minoring in applied mathematics and philosophy, is a graduate of Lord Botetourt High School in Daleville. He is the son of Kevin and Lori Roberts. Following graduation, he will commission into the U.S. Space Force where he hopes to do work in cybersecurity or electromagnetic warfare.

Honors Week: Exploring the Complexities of Desegregation

Patrick Kiernan ’25 started exploring different civil rights cases at the Supreme Court level during a class in high school. He found it interesting to see how different cases were and how civil rights progressed.

Jumping forward to his time at Virginia Military Institute, he started exploring more education-based civil rights cases. His interest then formed into a plan for this honors thesis, “The Courts and Educational Equality: The History of the Court’s Role in Desegregation, Integration, and Equality in American Public Schools,” which he presented during VMI Honors Week.

His thesis was centered on the enforcement of desegregation post-Brown v. Board of Education, focusing on the 1960s and 1970s. Divided into five key Supreme Court cases, Kiernan explored the complexities of desegregation, focusing on: Griffin v. Prince Edward County, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Milliken v. Bradley, San Antonio v. Rodriguez, and Regents of the University of California v. Bakke.

“Overall, I was trying to look at the challenges of desegregating,” he explained. “The way it’s taught in schools is that it was almost overnight. There was more going in, it was a lot more complicated. I was looking at what made it so complicated and what made it difficult to desegregate and all the other problems that kind of came with it.”

Kiernan dedicated between three to seven hours a week to reading, research, and writing in order to tackle a 70-page paper.

“I think it’s helped me develop my writing skills a bit more, because I’ve been able to write that long and able to make it more of a coherent thing,” he said. “Because, even with some of my other classes where it’s like a five- paragraph essay, it’s easy to keep it coherent when it’s that short. But when you’re trying to navigate something that’s almost the size of a small book, it takes a lot more thought and care to be able to put that all together.”

Lt. Col. Mark Boonshoft, associate professor in the Department of History, was Kiernan’s academic advisor for his thesis. The history department requires a longer thesis and additional preparatory semester of work during a cadet’s 2nd Class year, Boonshoft explained.

Boonshoft started working with Kiernan last spring with an independent study, where Kiernan studied school desegregation as it relates to courts specifically. Through that, the two refined Kiernan’s topic to identify primary sources, settle on research methods, and discuss writing.

“Compared with other disciplines, history requires a lot of independence in research for undergraduates,” Boonshoft said. “Cadet Kiernan’s project is on a subject I know a lot about from teaching it for years, but it is not something on which I have done independent research. I am not reading the hundreds of pages of primary sources from Supreme Court justices’ private papers that Cadet Kiernan is. I can keep tabs on his work, look at his notes, review drafts frequently, discuss the research weekly, but this is not collaborative research. Cadet Kiernan deserves the credit for having produced 70 -pages of carefully researched, well-sourced, original work.”

Kiernan said that the process of research and writing his thesis sparked new ambitions for him. He previously had an interest in law school, but this experience has prompted him to shift to potentially graduate school. Although Kiernan will be commissioning into the U.S. Army after graduating in May, he said the future prospect of grad school has become more alluring.

As part of the Institute Honors program, the history major said it’s allowed him to explore other concentrations and widen his academic discoveries. He said it’s made him more intellectually curious.

“If you really want to learn more about the world in general, I think Institute Honors has helped,” Kiernan admitted. “I’ve been able to learn a lot, even if it wasn’t necessarily something in my discipline.”

Boonshoft said that Kiernan’s research will help him when he commissions into the Army. He said that constitutional history has become an area of focus at VMI to help train its citizen-soldiers.

“Research like this brings important constitutional issues to cadets’ attention. It’s research that also bears on VMI’s own story of racial integration in the 1960s, of affirmative action, and so forth,” Boonshoft said. “I think this research shows his commitment to the citizenship side of the citizen-soldier ideal. More concretely, it has given him a chance to hone important skills of analysis, of writing, and most importantly of formulating clear questions and strategizing ways to answer them. He has also had to synthesize huge amounts of information into a coherent narrative. That skill of separating what is important and what’s just noise will serve him well in the military and beyond.”

Honors Week: Freeman Compares Philosophers

Brooks Freeman ’25, an English major at Virginia Military Institute, sought a common core between the philosophies of Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī, a 13th century Middle Eastern Sufi mystic and poet, and SØren Kierkegaard, a 19th century Danish philosopher, theologian, and poet, in his honors presentation, “Varieties of Mystical Experience: Encountering the Absolute in Rūmī and Kierkegaard.”

Freeman found inspiration for his research after traveling to England and Morocco in the summer of 2023. In England, he studied existential philosophy and comparative religion.

“Going into the existential philosophy class, the first person we read was Kierkegaard, who is regarded as the original existentialist. He wrote extensively about faith, and I became interested in his ideas. In my comparative religion class, I learned a little about Sufism and Christian mysticism, and found those to be very interesting,” shared Freeman. Upon returning to VMI the following fall, he decided he wanted to compare the two thinkers for his honors thesis.

Freeman cited Pseudo-Dionysius, an ancient Greek theologian, for his definition of mysticism. “‘The experiential encounter with the utterly transcendental reality that God is.’ Basically, a meeting with God.”

He described some differences between Christian mysticism and Sufism.

“The first and most obvious difference would be their foundations; Sufism founded from Islam, and Christian mysticism from Christianity. They also have different end goals. Christian mysticism is about union with God while keeping one’s individual characteristics, and Sufism is about annihilation of oneself to form a kind of oneness with God.”

Similarities he listed between the two philosophies include the individual taking an internal journey toward divine union, poetry rich in symbolism, and teaching and guidance.

“Then the final thing is this idea of the absurd that you can see in Kierkegaard’s writing. It has to do with something that cannot be comprehended logically, but is believed through faith, which Kierkegaard wrote is extremely difficult. It is something that is present in Rūmī’s writing as well,” Freeman explained.

Freeman defended the premise of comparing the two authors because they are still relevant, they are widely read outside of their faith tradition, there is a lack of research comparing them, and they both sought a similar mystical path.

Freeman concluded that the paths of Kierkegaard and Rūmī are similar, but warned that the commonalities are steeped in their respective traditions, so context must be appreciated. Studying them in conjunction displays that mystical experiences can at once be common and contextualist.

Freeman’s advisor, Lt. Col. Patrick Eichholz, associate professor in the Department of English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies, has known Freeman for four years.

“I first met Brooks through the adopt-a-rat program, and it’s been a real pleasure to watch him develop as a scholar. I knew there was something different about Brooks the first time he came over to my house. When the other rats asked for the Netflix password, Brooks asked for book recommendations. After Breakout, I saw a lot less of Brooks, but I was not surprised when I heard all the updates that Brooks was joining the honors program, preparing for the LSAT, and traveling overseas for various study abroad opportunities.”

Freeman is from Noblesville, Indiana, and minoring in Arabic. He is an alumnus of Culver Academies and the son of Lee and Rose Freeman. He plans to attend law school following graduation.

Honors Week: Do Comedy and Political Rhetoric Mix?

Is it the role of entertainers to take on serious issues and use their celebrity status to sway opinion? Johnny Carson, host of The Tonight Show for nearly 30 years and one of the most famous comedians of the 20^th century, once argued that comedians should not use their fame for influence. Rather, their job is to entertain.

Suzanne Leaptrot ’25, an English major with a concentration in rhetoric and writing at Virginia Military Institute, asked, “Where do we situate comedy in our understanding of political rhetoric?” in her honors thesis presentation, “Conventional Comedy: Analyzing Stephen Colbert’s Live Monologues from Democratic and Republican National Conventions.”

According to Leaptrot, comedy is not exempt from providing news. In fact, people are increasingly getting their news from comedy shows like Saturday Night Live, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and The Daily Show. “Comedians don’t have the same journalistic obligations that reporters do. Journalists can be called out when they provide false information and are expected to redact their statements and admit when they are wrong. When a comedian provides false information, he can say, ‘Oh, it was just a joke.’ Yet these comedy shows still frame opinions, so I sought to evaluate comedy with the analytic framework of demagoguery,” she said.

Leaptrot referenced the Oxford English Dictionary when defining a demagogue as, “someone who seeks support by appealing to the desires and prejudices of ordinary people instead of using rational argument.” She studied two theories of demagoguery and settled on her own theory, and applied those principles to comedian Stephen Colbert’s live monologues from each side of the Democratic National Conventions (DNC) and Republican National Conventions (RNC) in 2016, 2020, and 2024.

The first theory Leaptrot studied was that of Patricia Roberts-Miller, author of “Demagoguery and Democracy,” who stated that demagoguery is always bad, and the main indicator of demagoguery is when arguments are reduced to an “us versus them” problem. The prime example is Adolf Hitler. The second theory Leaptrot researched is that of Charles Zug, author of “Demagogues in American Politics.” “Zug argues that Americans live in a society that thrives on populism and demagoguery. It paradoxically claims to hate demagoguery, but there is a time and place for political leaders—and political leaders only—to engage in demagogic rhetoric that is beneficial to democracy. He says in a civic emergency when there’s no time for politicians to explain the rationale behind their decisions, they are obligated to engage in demagoguery,” reported Leaptrot.

After comparing the two theorists, Leaptrot concluded that a good demagogue does not exist because a good demagogue isn’t a demagogue at all. “There’s a type of good demagoguery that is only valid in a rhetorical emergency. Someone may use demagoguery as a rhetorical device one time, but demagoguery is not a part of his character. This is where Stephen Colbert comes in.”

Leaptrot, who is a fan of Colbert’s comedy, viewed five hours of his monologues from both the DNC and RNC in 2016, 2020, and 2024. “In theory, they are identical events, but from opposite sides of the political aisle. What better place to look for a disparity in how he talks about each side?” She found that Colbert consistently belittled and criticized republicans, but praised and was favorable of the democrats. She concluded that her parameters of demagoguery apply to Colbert’s monologues in 2020, but not for 2016 nor 2024.

Maj. Adam Cody, assistant professor in the Department of English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies, served as Leaptrot’s advisor on the project. Cody stated that she reflects some of the noblest aspirations of the liberal arts educational program. “It is in Suzanne’s nature, when confronted with a challenge, to advance toward it, not to retreat from it. She has a fondness for learning and takes joy in discovering new answers to old questions,” he said.

Leaptrot is from McLean, Virginia, where she attended Langley High School. She is the daughter of Jeanne Peck. After graduation, Leaptrot hopes to teach English in Lithuania through the Fulbright Program. She also wants to pursue a master’s degree in intelligence and security studies.

Honors Week: Why Live? Cadet Researches Philosopher’s Personal Resilience

Simon Moore ’25 was drawn to Arthur Schopenhauer’s pessimistic views and honesty about pain and suffering. He said it might be considered a taboo subject, but it intrigued him.

He presented his thesis, “Why Live?: An Analysis of Arthur Schopenhauer’s Life and Philosophy,” during Virginia Military Institute’s Honors Week. The psychology major decided to commit his time outside his department to a philosophy-focused thesis.

“There’s not really a lot of opportunity to read and learn about philosophy,” Moore admitted. “That was something that I kind of wished that I had.”

He essentially willed that and was allowed to pursue the topic of Schopenhauer’s life due to his desire to explore something more reading and writing intensive — something he hadn’t really done during his cadetship.

Moore’s thesis explored why Schopenhauer, despite his pessimistic life and work, did not commit suicide, focusing on his denial of the will through art, philosophy, compassion, and detachment. He analyzed Schopenhauer’s life, including his daily routine, his relationships, and his philosophical pursuits, to determine if he lived up to his own ideals.

The research involved extensive reading and writing, with a focus on understanding Schopenhauer as a man and the alignment of his life and work.

Moore pointed out Schopenhauer’s philosophy offers four key principles for personal resilience: art and aesthetic pleasures, philosophical thinking and reading, compassion, and detachment.

In his thesis, Moore emphasizes that these principles are always available, regardless of life’s circumstances. They provide tools for maintaining perspective and finding meaning, even during personal struggles. The core idea is to consciously choose how to respond to suffering — through art, reflection, compassion, and detachment — rather than being overwhelmed by life’s challenges.

He began his research last spring, spending about four to five hours a week on reading materials. That amped up in the fall and this spring to about eight to 10 hours a week of research. By February, he was writing his thesis in full force.

Moore said that this research opportunity allowed him to diversify himself as a student at VMI.

“That’s something that I’m really proud of doing. Nearing the end of this project, I did something that maybe a lot of other cadets aren’t necessarily willing to do,” he said. “I intend to sort of continue this philosophical interest of mine into my career after VMI.”

Moore plans to continue exploring philosophy, particularly in the context of wealth management, where understanding individual suffering and resilience is crucial.

Dr. Duncan Richter, professor in the Department of English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies, was Moore’s academic advisor for his thesis. Richter met with Moore once a week to make sure he was on track, while providing feedback on what he had written and suggesting other readings.

“He is pretty self-motivated and hasn’t needed much correction, so I feel as though I have been relatively hands-off,” Richter said. “It’s my job as a professor to try to get cadets to think more and better, and this project has certainly got Cadet Moore thinking very carefully about the nature of reality and the meaning of life. If he can share some of his enthusiasm for philosophy and some of the insights he has gained, then that’s good for everyone here.

“I hope he has enjoyed doing it, but, above all, I think he has really been thinking critically about important questions. That can only be good for his intellectual development,” Richter added.

Tag: Honors Week