Progress
Cadets conduct studies in the altitude chamber, which simulates the effect of the low oxygen found at high altitudes. The purchase of the chamber was made possible through a Jackson-Hope Grant.—VMI Photo by Kelly Nye.
Jackson-Hope: A Chance to Excel By Mary Price, Associate Editor Established over 20 years ago to encourage and sustain educational excellence and innovation, the Jackson-Hope Fund is a prominent example of visionary generosity directed toward the Institute. As the 1990s ended and the 21st century was about to dawn, the VMI Alumni Agencies began planning a major capital campaign. Reveille: A Call to Excel would go on to raise $207 million, and, as part of that campaign, a group of alumni led by George C. Phillips Jr. ’60 and Lt. Gen. Josiah Bunting III ’63, then-superintendent, pondered how best to strengthen the Institute’s already rigorous academic program. Picking up on a trend in higher education that donors often like to help steward their funds, the Jackson-Hope Fund came into existence. Part donor advised fund and part venture capital fund, the Jackson-Hope Fund has attracted gifts of more than $50 million since its inception and has supported a host of initiatives, all oriented toward cadet success and faculty development. The Jackson-Hope Board of Overseers, composed primarily of alumni, oversees the distribution of grants from the fund each year. Thanks to the Jackson-Hope Fund, cadet support services such as Mathematics Education Resource Center and the VMI Center for Undergraduate Research first came into being, along with key programming at the Center for Leadership and Ethics, which advances the understanding, practice, and integration of leadership and character development at the Institute. For cadets, the Jackson-Hope Fund is a vital source of support for independent research projects and off-post travel, both to present at conferences and to conduct research in places such as the National Archives, presidential libraries, and more. “VCUR relies heavily on Jackson-Hope as well as other donations to
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private support,” noted Col. Scott Frein, Ph.D., director of VCUR. For approximately two decades, that funding has supplied a stipend for select cadets who’ve chosen to stay in Lexington during the summer months and participate in the Summer Undergraduate Research Institute. SURI, which drew approximately 30 cadets in summer 2021, enables cadets to conduct research under the guidance of a faculty mentor. Information gleaned during summer research often becomes the start of a cadet’s Institute Honors thesis. The five- to 10-week summer sessions are times of challenge, learning, and growth, many times helping cadets to realize that they are far more capable than they’d thought. “I never thought I’d be able to write like that,” commented Cadet Noah Cady ’23, a psychology major who worked with Maj. Jillian Stuart, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology, last summer to explore how Twitter messages influence individuals’ decisions about receiving a COVID-19 vaccine. As a culmination of his project, Cady wrote a 50-page paper—the longest he’d written in his life. Before that, Cady had never had an independent research experience. As a high schooler, he’d concentrated on football more than academics, and he’d never thought of himself as particularly academically inclined. SURI changed that. Cady pushed past challenges, such as learning APA style for a paper, and he wrestled with IBM SPSS Statistics, which is software used for statistical analysis of data. He turned in drafts of his papers, got them back covered with red ink, and turned them back in for another round of editing. “Research is really building a product,” he noted. “You have to do things
VMI Alumni Review
