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Accessibility to instructors, to faculty and staff, is such an important part of being at West Point and what sets us apart from other institutions. We know that when students are coming here, oftentimes it's the first time they're away from home. They're not going to a school right down the road from their parents, right? So we become their family.

A lot of the military faculty do live on post, which is wonderful because first, we get to see our students if they have questions or we can come in anytime that we need to. But it also means that we're part of our students' communities. We can have students over for dinner. We can talk.

Do they need anything? Are they going somewhere for Thanksgiving? Do they need a ride to the train station to go home?

And we're trying to develop them to be really thoughtful leaders and people that can be just as open with their soldiers once they graduate, with the people that they're working with. So we are modeling that for our students every day-- and additionally, to show them how networking works, that if you can have these personal connections between faculty and student, that these extend past graduation. It's not just a moment in the classroom.

I was hired to come teach at West Point by a professor that I'd had my senior year at West Point. When I was writing my applications for grad school, I reached out and contacted instructors that I had at West Point and I was getting responses back within minutes. And it's not just with the faculty and staff, but that extends in the Army, as well. And so modeling it here shows them how to make connections with people and the benefits of the connections you can have with other people in the Army.

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