On deck for Leadership Day: sailing vets, community mural, literacy coaching

The Citadel’s Leadership Day 2015 includes 1,200 cadets volunteering across Lowcountry 

All year long cadets and students from The Citadel learn to lead by serving others; volunteering is an important part of their four year leadership development. But on one particular day each October called Leadership Day, the entire South Carolina Corps of Cadets is solely dedicated to service learning and ethics education. Every cadet participates, whether it is through hands-on volunteerism, job shadowing business leaders, or attending ethics training from a global organization.

Leadership Day 2015 will be held on Wednesday, Oct. 21. As the sun comes up, more than 1,200 cadets and students will head out to more than 50 locations which will include many public schools. They will help lead STEM and literacy classroom activities, clean up parks, prepare food for people still suffering from recent floods, and attend seminars offered by the Institute for Global Ethics, along with dozens of other undertakings.

New this year is Paint Strong for Charleston Strong – a community mural project honoring the nine members of the Emanuel AME Church killed by a gunman in June, and the city’s unified response to the tragedy. School groups and members of the community will participate in painting hundreds of doves on the college’s wall along Rutledge Ave. For more about Paint Strong for Charleston Strong, which was started by The Citadel Director of Fine Arts and the Krause Center for Leadership and Ethics, please click here.

Also new will be cadets assisting with a program called Veterans on Deck, where they will help clean sailboats and then sail with veterans who are learning the craft. Additionally, a group of cadets will head to Sweet Grass Farm on John’s Island, which is a 2-acre, non-profit farming venture that grows food for the hungry while practicing and teaching sustainable agriculture. The cadets will lead a group of children from Charleston County School District’s Daniel Jenkins Creative Learning Center as they plant and tend vegetables growing at the farm.  A partial list of other Leadership Day activities can be found below.

“Leadership day at The Citadel goes far beyond the classroom training that cadets receive about honor, duty, and respect. This day provides an opportunity to put selfless service and loyalty to the community as number one,” said Brianna Young, Regimental Public Affairs Officer for the South Carolina Corps of Cadets. “Often, leadership day is a pivotal moment in a cadet's career that fosters a love and passion for service learning when they witness how giving back to the community has such an extraordinary impact.

Leadership Day is planned and managed annually by The Citadel’s Krause Center for Leadership and Ethics and contributed greatly to The Citadel being selected by the Carnegie Foundation’s Elective Community Engagement Classification.  

“Activities on Leadership Day are designed to engage cadets and students in meaningful learning opportunities outside the classroom through service in the community,” said Col. Tom Clark, USMC (retired), and director for The Krause Center for Leadership and Ethics. “It’s an all-hands-on-deck kind of day that takes a lot of support from Citadel faculty and staff in addition to the cadets.”

Dr. Conway Saylor, director of Service Learning and Civic Engagement at the Krause Center has watched the event blossom from the first “Heroism Day” of five years ago.

“We started in 2010 placing 150 cadets in service opportunities. It’s staggering to look back to that and see where we are now,” Saylor said. “We couldn’t hold Leadership Day without the support of more than 45 community partners for whom many cadets volunteer not only on this day but throughout the year.”

Leadership Day 2014 provided an estimated 8,261 hours of volunteer service to the Lowcountry valued at approximately $188,811, by 1,334 Citadel volunteers. Watch a video from Leadership Day 2014 here.