Letter from the Superintendent

Members of the West Point Team,

Our unwavering dedication to developing the Corps of Cadets into commissioned leaders of character for the Army continues to be exceptional. I extend my sincere gratitude to those of you who have contributed to our critical mission, and to those who are beginning their service at this hallowed institution.

All members of the West Point Team - cadets and all military and civilian staff, faculty, and coaches assigned to West Point - play a crucial role in developing commissioned leaders of character who live honorably, lead honorably, and demonstrate excellence. Developing commissioned leaders of character is our mission-essential task and thus is my top priority. This crucial role extends to stewarding our culture of character growth, a culture that is vital to being the world’s preeminent leader development institution.

Although we all contribute in unique ways to building, educating, training, and inspiring the Corps of Cadets, we all must be committed to developing the character of cadets. Character development is the most important thing we do at the United States Military Academy (USMA). I expect you to take advantage of every interaction with a cadet as an opportunity for character development, to set a standard for professional behavior, and to encourage character growth within each other. This is our collective responsibility.

Developing Leaders of Character (DLC) is our foundational document. It summarizes at the institutional level how we achieve our mission through the West Point Leader Development System. All lower-echelon publications should be consistent with the guidance it provides. DLC is meant to empower your actions toward effectively developing leaders of character; the document serves as my commander’s intent for the achievement of our mission. Read it and understand your role in accomplishing our mission.

In addition to DLC, I also expect every member of our team to read and understand their roles in the USMA Strategy and in my annual guidance. The Strategy describes my priorities in five Lines of Effort (LOEs); these LOEs prioritize areas of growth as we continue to achieve our vision of being the world’s preeminent leader development institution. My annual guidance is informed by our assessments and further prioritizes our efforts and resources.

In closing, I ask you to be positive, do your best, and be a good teammate. Only together will we continue to develop leaders of character who live honorably, lead honorably, and demonstrate excellence. Thank you for your commitment.

STEVEN W. GILLAND
Lieutenant General, U.S. Army
Superintendent

West Point Leader Development System (WPLDS)

The West Point Leader Development System (WPLDS), the comprehensive and integrated approach to character development outlined throughout Developing Leaders of Character (DLC), distinguishes West Point as the preeminent leader development institution and requires a culture that prioritizes character growth throughout the pursuit of academic, military, and physical excellence. This holistic development is achieved through WPLDS.

To develop cadets into leaders of character, cadets are immersed in WPLDS, which is designed to harness every facet of the West Point experience while leveraging specific developmental events and activities to reinforce and assess character and honorable living. 

Cadets’ primary role in WPLDS is to take ownership of their personal development, seeking to grow professionally and become leaders of character. They are also expected to serve as exemplary role models and trainers, enhancing the development of peers and followers.

WPLDS promotes cadet development by integrating the three developmental programs and comprehensive character development at the institutional, program, course, and activity levels. 

• At the institution level, USMA leaders ensure the required experiences sufficiently cover and reinforce the WPLDS outcomes.
• At the program level, integration occurs when leaders ensure courses or activities intentionally connect learning across experiences, especially those contributing to Comprehensive Character Development.
• Staff and faculty find meaningful ways of integrating some facet of character development into their efforts. All faculty, staff, and coaches provide formal or informal feedback; many also systematically plan for and assist in structured reflection at critical points throughout the cadet’s experiences.
• Integration occurs when faculty, staff, and coaches form, coordinate, or blend seemingly disparate developmental experiences into a unified and synergistic whole greater than the sum of the parts, thus achieving a greater developmental effect. 

The most impactful development occurs when cadets integrate the knowledge and practice gained across the breadth of their developmental efforts.

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When interacting with cadets, it can be helpful to remember the three key components of character development.

• Character is caught indicates that character is learned through socialization and through watching the actions of others. Role models and exemplars play a significant part in others “catching” character; thus, every member of the West Point team must be committed to demonstrating strong character.
• Character is taught in formal and informal settings within the curriculum. Courses in the Academic Program and during several military program activities deliberately teach character, but character education can also happen in spontaneous teaching moments that occur in real time and in context.
• Character is sought is a reminder that people are active in their own character development. USMA provides opportunities for cadets to cultivate character as they seek ways to demonstrate virtuous excellence. If cadets do not pursue those opportunities with the motivation to improve themselves, then culture and teaching will not have the desired effect.

Professional Climate Within a Culture of Character Growth

Like the culture of character growth, West Point’s professional climate is vital in shaping the cadet experience and enables character to be effectively caught. Different from culture, climate manifests in the immediate attitudes and actions toward each other and the collective outlook of the organization. 

Less persistent than culture, climate is temporary, changing due to current leadership, policies, academics, training, and events. A professional climate requires respect for the dignity of all individuals and is expected across our enterprise. West Point members look out for each other and strive to be good teammates within and across offices, departments, directorates, the academy, and West Point as a whole. 

West Point provides a growth-oriented environment to maximize opportunities for everyone to succeed. Teammates hold each other accountable to high standards, and that accountability is welcome.

Understanding the relationship between the culture of character growth and the professional climate enhances and empowers efforts to develop (and sustain) the character of every West Point teammate. Promoting both is a continuous endeavor that requires vigilance, personal effort, and mutual accountability.

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Stewardship

The primary professional responsibility of all faculty, staff, coaches, and cadets is to develop commissioned leaders of character. Character development occurs across all programs and in every environment. While all are expected to set the example as role models who foster a positive environment, every member of the West Point team also has a unique role related to cadet development and stewarding West Point’s culture of character growth.

Primary Roles

The following leaders and groups have a primary role in our shared responsibility to develop and mentor cadets to become commissioned leaders of character.

• Superintendent: The Superintendent is the senior character development leader and integrator, being ultimately accountable for the development of commissioned leaders of character.
• The Academic Board (AB): The AB advises the Superintendent and serves as the supervisory and integrative body of the academic, military, and physical programs, all grounded within West
  Point’s culture of character growth.
  • The WPLDS Committee promotes and assesses the effective implementation of WPLDS, in particular the WPLDS outcomes, and makes recommendations on any needed improvements to the AB.
• The Policy Board (PB): The PB advises the Superintendent on comprehensive and integrated planning, resourcing, implementation, and assessment efforts, which enable effective implementation of the USMA Strategy.
• The Dean of the Academic Board:
  • Ensures that faculty and staff meet institutional expectations.
  • Clearly defines, plans for, and assesses academic program outcomes to ensure that they support the WPLDS outcomes.
  • Ensure that character development activities are appropriately integrated within the academic program and across program boundaries.
  • Ensures that adequate time is allocated on the AB agenda to routinely discuss matters related to character development.
  • Identifies and addresses the impact that any program changes have on other programs and on character development.
  • Ensures that specified programs maintain program accreditation.
  • As part of the annual report process, it updates the Superintendent on character development integration.
• The Commandant:
  • Ensures that cadets, faculty, and staff meet institutional expectations.
  • Clearly defines, plans for, and assesses military and physical program outcomes to ensure that they support the WPLDS outcomes.
  • Oversees the effective implementation and integration of character development throughout the directorate and across program boundaries. This includes oversight of the honor education program.
  • Provides oversight of the Honor System.
  • Identifies and addresses the impact that any program changes have on other programs and on character development.
  • As part of the annual report process, it updates the Superintendent on character development integration.
• The Athletic Director:
  • Ensures that coaches and APWAD staff members meet the expectations, instill a commitment to West Point over individual and team goals and accolades, and train and inspire teams to compete to win with honor and sportsmanship.
  • As part of the annual report process, it updates the Superintendent on character development integration.

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Continuous Improvement

If we are not improving, we are stagnating. As the world’s preeminent leader development institution that provides the leaders of character that the Army and Nation need, West Point must continuously improve at every level of cadet development.

Continuous improvement begins at the individual level, where faculty and staff provide cadets with feedback on meeting desired outcomes and through numerous methods, e.g., daily feedback given to a cadet by the instructor, cadet chain of command, or Tac Team, and feedback on formal assessments.

An essential part of continuous improvement for every developmental activity is to know what the desired end state is. An end state for cadet development is often referred to as a learning outcome (LO). All development activities at West Point should have a desired end state or LO.

Course, program, and WPLDS outcomes then take advantage of a curriculum map, which shows the activity and outcome relationship; “after examining assessment results, the curriculum map is the first place to look.” An effective map also ensures appropriate coverage of development to achieve the LO. 

When assessing LOs and/or activities, faculty and staff routinely use MOPs and MOEs to identify what works and what does not work during developmental events. MOPs are used to determine if faculty and staff are doing to standard what they say they are doing. MOEs are used to determine if the provided programs and experiences are achieving the desired outcomes. 

Use of USMA’s MOEs is most effective when they are used to assess longitudinally desired outcomes so that cadet development is assessed as it progresses. Assessing learning outcomes can be challenging when the outcomes are broad and intangible. In these cases, it is essential that the activity has a solid theoretic foundation for what, why, and how it is being done. It is also important that the MOPs indicate that the activity is conducted as planned.

Individual assessments in the classrooms or activities lead to assessing a course or activity’s LOs, which then inform the annual assessments of disciplinary majors and core courses, and then of the programs (academic, military, and physical).

Annual program assessment reports inform directorate annual reports, which provide assessments on the USMA Strategy’s Lines of Effort. The content of directorate annual reports specific to cadet development include:

• Updates on contributions and assessments to the USMA Strategy and the Superintendent’s Annual Guidance.
• Assessments of program outcomes.
• Updates on and assessments of character integration efforts, including the directorate’s contributions to Comprehensive Character Development.

USMA accomplishes its mission when its graduates live honorably, lead honorably, and demonstrate excellence. Thus, at the institution level, there is a systematic assessment of the WPLDS outcomes and processes using multiple internal and external indicators. 

Since all program outcomes are aligned with the WPLDS outcomes, program assessments directly support the assessment of the WPLDS outcomes. Through these assessments, West Point determines if the programs and experiences are achieving the desired outcomes.

Using multiple internal and external indicators, the WPLDS Committee completes the WPLDS Annual Report. This Annual Report is a major component of the overall USMA Annual Report, which is the culmination of the USMA annual assessment process. The USMA Annual Report informs the Superintendent’s Annual Guidance for the upcoming academic year.

Example internal and external indicators used to assess the WPLDS outcomes for the Annual Report include:

• Academic, military, and physical program assessments
• Executive summaries of core courses and disciplinary majors
• Periodic Development Reports (PDRs) and Cadet Observation Reports (CORs)
• Numerous external (national, DOD, Department of the Army) cadet and faculty surveys
• Internal surveys and focus groups with cadets, faculty, staff, and coaches.

A more comprehensive description of USMA’s assessment processes is in USMA Regulation MA-19-02, Strategic Planning and Institutional Effectiveness (SPIE) Processes.

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