Culture

I had the good fortune to visit the United States Naval Academy late last year as part of a project we are working on for its Alumni Association. 

The campus is beautiful and the people are respectful and generous with their time, but I walked away with a new appreciation of what institutional culture can really mean.

The Naval Academy exists to create leaders, and leaders, specifically, to defend our country in times of war.

Walking on campus, there were uniformed students and officers and cannons and many martial components I never saw at my alma mater... but the most striking visual to me was the athletic fields that are a stone's throw away from the campus graveyard.

Even at play, death is a constant.

THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is culture.

The United States Naval Academy Mission:

To develop Midshipmen morally, mentally and physically and to imbue them with the highest ideals of duty, honor and loyalty in order to graduate leaders who are dedicated to a career of naval service and have potential for future development in mind and character, to assume the highest responsibilities of command, citizenship and government.