VWIL programming focuses on developing core ethical values like truth, duty, honor, courage, and self discipline. Cadets pursue a normal undergraduate degree and minor in leadership studies while exploring those values through a rigorous program of ROTC military training, citizen leadership development, service-based volunteerism, intense physical workouts, co-curricular experiences, and more. A regimen of team-building exercises — which begins at visit day events and resumes before the first day of classes — ensures they make early bonds with classmates and feel at home.
When participating in activities with alumni, current students, and other recruits earlier this spring, Lee knew she’d “made the right decision. Everything felt so familiar and safe, like I was right where I was supposed to be,” she said. “I realized that, as much as other campuses may have seemed appealing, they could never feel like home the way MBU does.”
Like Mahoney, many VWIL graduates — about 55 percent in the past 5 years — commission into the military, with many going on to attain high-level ranks like captains or colonels. Others pursue civilian careers in fields like intelligence, foreign service, education, criminal justice, health and human services, business, or jurisprudence.
Djuric called the admittance of the program’s first legacy students a historic milestone.
“Twenty-eight years ago, the Supreme Court launched Mary Baldwin and VWIL into the national conversation,” she said. And to this day we “proudly continue to recruit motivated leaders to join the corps of cadets. We look forward to continuing to welcome the daughters of our VWIL graduates over the next 25-year chapter of our proud history.”
