Strengthen Academics

Why Academics?

Private support bolsters faculty development, fosters innovative courses, develops first-rate facilities, and provides cadets with a strong grounding in leadership – advancing and enhancing VMI’s distinctive academic program.

Scholarships

Recruiting, retaining and recognizing academic pacesetters with merit scholarships and providing opportunity with need-based scholarships offers cadets the opportunity to embrace academic rigor
coupled with a commitment to honor, duty and professionalism.

Preston Library and Archives

The Friends of Preston Library Fund provides resources to VMI’s hub of research and study. The library is also home to the VMI Archives, the repository of the Institute’s historic records.

The Center for Leadership and Ethics

The CLE programming prepares cadets for honorable and purposeful leadership.

Undergrad Research

Cadets have the option to join a professor from any academic division in an area of research focus, or cadets may propose a personalized research.

Professorships and Chairs

Professorships and chairs ensure VMI’s ability to recruit, retain and reward a faculty renowned for its intellectual rigor, mentorship and academic relevance. It is an opportunity to recognize faculty who have distinguished themselves by their wise stewardship and evolution of the academic program for which they are responsible.

Meet Sam Wolfe ’23

In high school, the focus for Sam Wolfe ’23 was basketball. He didn’t receive a basketball scholarship to VMI, but he applied for and received funding as an Institute Scholar, which is supported from one of VMI’s most flexible funding streams, the VMI Foundation Fund. That, combined with an Army ROTC scholarship, covered his educational costs. He remembers reading through his email and realizing his education would be paid for. “I remember sitting in the car, back home, and pulling all my emails and reading that, and I just smiled. I just sat there and smiled.” Having his post-secondary education paid for was a “huge opportunity and a blessing that very few people get,” Wolfe said.

Wolfe has been hearing about the VMI alumni network for years and it was the Institute’s camaraderie that appealed to Wolfe from the beginning. It’s the people who make it special, who make the Institute what it is. “I can’t really put it into words,” he said. “If I meet another VMI grad outside of VMI, there’s an instant connection.”
He’s also impressed that one-quarter of VMI’s budget comes from alumni donations. He’s already felt the personal impact of alumni taking the time to help each other. Even before he matriculated, alumni reached out to him and gave him pointers about VMI. Before his first day as a cadet, VMI showed him opportunities beyond the basketball court.

Academic and Corps Highlights

• Institute Scholar
• Biology major with 4.0 GPA
• Voted by his peers as class valedictorian
• Commissioned Army
• Held rank in the Corps of Cadets
• Member of the Keydet basketball team