This episode features an interview between Dr. Yasmine Kalkstein, the Lead Character Integrator and Associate Professor at United States Military Academy at West Point, and Dr. Jeffrey Peterson, the Director of the Character Integration Advisory Group (CIAG), at the United States Military Academy.
This episode features an interview between Dr. Yasmine Kalkstein, the Lead Character Integrator and Associate Professor at United States Military Academy at West Point, and Dr. Jeffrey Peterson, the Director of the Character Integration Advisory Group (CIAG), at the United States Military Academy.
Dr. Peterson served on active duty for 28 years in a variety of leadership and staff positions in the United States, Korea, Cuba, and the Middle East to include a combat battalion command during “the surge” in Iraq. After command, he served as the director of West Point’s economics program from 2008 – 2014. In 2012, Colonel (Ret.) Peterson was the Director, Center for the Army Profession and Ethic (CAPE) where he led the effort to publish the Army’s first doctrinal manual on the Army Profession and Ethic. Formally, while serving as the Chair for the Study of Officership at West Point from 2015-2021, he stewarded the West Point Superintendent’s capstone course on officership, designs character and leader development programs, and advises senior academy leaders on the state of West Point’s Honor System. He is a 1987 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, followed by the MIT Sloan School of Management, and holds a PhD in Policy Analysis from the Pardee RAND Graduate School.
In this episode of On Point, Dr. Peterson discusses the diversification of the United States Military Academy over time in terms of gender, ethnicity, and race, and how as the army and society evolve, so too do the challenges being faced related to the complexities of behavior and character. He also talks about how the launch of the Character Integration Advisory Group is aimed at tackling this issue. The initiative helps launch a fourth pillar at West Point that teaches specific things about character education while still weaving character development into other programs to bring a coherent, cohesive, holistic, and progressive approach to the issue.
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“One of the things we recognized is that, while we're doing several activities that contribute to character, we weren't taking a holistic and integrated approach to this. And so we needed an organization whose full-time job was to bring in expertise and have the time and resources to look at character development across the academy and bring it into a coherent, cohesive, holistic, and progressive approach from day one on our day, all the way through commissioning, and then ideally continuing on for the rest of their life.” - Dr. Jeffrey Peterson
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1:37 - Introducing the Character Integration Advisory Group
2:12 - Pillars of the West Point developmental programs
3:04 - Character as the fourth pillar of development
3:24 - The Simon Center and the four colored books
7:39 - Interdisciplinary hiring at the CIAG
11:55 - Relationship between wellness and character
15:07 - Compliance with the honor code and acting virtuously
17:20 - Explaining the Character Growth Seminar
21:26 - The goal of improving character development at West Point
22:44 - The Souffle Scenario
26:08 - Integrity and relational skills in character development
28:30 - Impact of COVID on interpersonal communication
32:32 - Cadet basic training introducing squad journaling
36:36 - The 47 month deliberate, holistic, and progressive character education process
39:12 - The value of the CIAG
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Connect with Dr. Jeffrey Peterson on LinkedIn
Connect with Dr. Yasmine Kalkstein on LinkedIn
West Point Association of Graduates
[00:00:00] Narrator: Hello and welcome to On Point.
This episode features an interview between Yasmine Kalkstein, the Lead Character Integrator and Associate Professor at United States Military Academy at West Point, and Dr. Jeffrey Peterson, the Director of the Character Integration Advisory Group, at the United States Military Academy.
Dr. Peterson is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy and the MIT Sloan School of Management, and holds a PhD in Policy Analysis from the Pardee RAND Graduate School.
He served on active duty for 28 years in a variety of leadership and staff positions in the United States, Korea, Cuba, and the Middle East, including a combat battalion command during “the surge” in Iraq.
In this episode, Dr. Peterson discusses the diversification of the United States Military Academy in terms of gender, ethnicity, and race. He also talks about the launch of the Character Integration Advisory Group, and how it’s tackling complex issues of behavior and character in an evolving society.
Now, please enjoy this interview between Yasmine Kalkstein, the Lead Character Integrator and Associate Professor at United States Military Academy at West Point, and Dr. Jeffrey Peterson, the Director of the Character Integration Advisory Group, at the United States Military Academy.
[00:01:22] Dr. Yasmine Kalkstein: Hi, I'm Dr. Yasmine Kalkstein the lead integrator for the character integration advisory group. This is a new initiative here at west point, and I'm here with our director, Dr. Jeff Peterson. Jeff, do you want to introduce yourself and your role?
[00:01:36] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: Sure. My name is Dr. Jeff Peterson and as yes mean mentioned, I'm the director of the character integration advisory group, which is a new initiative at Western.
[00:01:47] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: Uh, newly established by the superintendent fully operational capacity on the 1st of August, but it's a team of 10 people whose sole purpose is to help the superintendent [00:02:00] by integrating character development across the four developmental programs we have at west point.
[00:02:06] Dr. Yasmine Kalkstein: So, Jeff, we haven't always had four pillars though, right?
[00:02:11] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: Well, that is true. For the longest time we had three, the military physical and academic in about 2015, we established a fourth pillar in addition to the other three. And it was in response to several of the challenges we were facing with character development and a way to organize our thoughts on our approaches to character development at west point.
[00:02:36] Dr. Yasmine Kalkstein: So does that mean that there was no character development before?
[00:02:39] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: No, no, not at all. Obviously character has been an essential part of Westpoint, a defining characteristic, if you will, of west point for such a long time. But the way we used to describe it was we would have the military physical academic programs and then woven throughout all three was moral, ethical [00:03:00] development or character.
[00:03:03] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: But as things evolved, as challenges evolved, we recognized we needed a fourth pillar that would teach some specific things about character education while still weaving character development in the other programs as well. So what
[00:03:19] Dr. Yasmine Kalkstein: was the role of the Simon center in that character pillar?
[00:03:23] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: So the Simon center is the proponent for the character pillar.
[00:03:28] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: It's the proponent is described in a document called the gold book. So the other programs each have their colored book, the academic has the red book physical as the white book. Military has the green book and now character has the gold book. And what the gold book does is describe all the specific things that the Simon center was responsible for in terms of character, to them.
[00:03:55] Dr. Yasmine Kalkstein: So why was the sea ag then created?
[00:03:59] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: So the [00:04:00] CA is a response to really two or three major trends that are going on. The first is as, as the Corps of cadets becomes more diverse as society goes through different changes, the challenges we're facing and behaviors related to character seem to be on the rise.
[00:04:24] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: And so we needed a way to more effectively integrate our character education across all four programs in order to deal with this new complexity. The second major trend is that the expectations for character are significantly different than they have historically been at west point. So the, as everyone knows the honor code, the honor system is an essential part of character development at west point that has always been important.
[00:04:57] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: It's always had a central role. [00:05:00] But as the army evolves, as the army becomes more diverse, there are other aspects of living and leading honorably that the army must now consider. So as the army has become more diverse in terms of gender, In terms of ethnicity and in terms of race, we needed to expand our definition of what it meant to live honorably, to be able to effectively build and lead cohesive teams.
[00:05:28] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: It wasn't just enough to comply with the honor code anymore. We now expect our graduates to develop climates within their organizations and to build teams that are cohesive. And that requires. An expanded version of what it means to live and lead on. So those are two major trends as to why the CA was established.
[00:05:52] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: And then as you look at all the great things that are going on at Westpoint, we're kind of left with this puzzle. If we're doing so many [00:06:00] good things, why do we seem to have some fairly persistent problems in terms of compliance with the toleration clause of the honor code in terms of how. We treat people with respect within our formation.
[00:06:15] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: We continue to struggle with this in some ways. And so one of the things we recognized is that. While we're doing several activities that contribute to character. We weren't taking a holistic and integrated approach to this. And so we needed an organization whose full-time job was to bring in expertise and have the time and resources to look at character development across the academy and bring it into a cohesive.
[00:06:46] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: Cohesive holistic and progressive approach from day one on our day, all the way through commissioning and then ideally continuing on for the rest of their life.
[00:06:57] Dr. Yasmine Kalkstein: So when you were looking at hiring people to [00:07:00] work at the seat, I'm very grateful you hired me, but what led you to, what led you to choose sort of who were the right matches?
[00:07:09] Dr. Yasmine Kalkstein: What were you looking for when you thought about what kind of team you wanted to bring together to lead this initiative forward?
[00:07:14] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: So, one of the interesting things about character development or character education that is purely or truly. Uh, multi-disciplinary interdisciplinary work. And so the fields that we were looking for to build a team for character education was philosophy, character education itself.
[00:07:35] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: We have a PhD, uh, on our team, a PhD in character education theology. Philosophy sociology, anthropology, and character in sports and psychology. I thought I said psychology already. So all these disciplines are on our team and we need [00:08:00] all those different perspectives because there's not one discipline that has a monopoly on what it means to develop character.
[00:08:07] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: This is a character. Education is an emerging field. Character has been important for thousands of years, defining it, developing it, measuring it, and understanding how characters developed is a relatively new field. And so we wanted to have multiple disciplines represented so that we could have. A truly holistic approach to this.
[00:08:32] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: It also helps us integrate with other departments when we have multi-disciplines, we can build relationships with other departments, other schools, and bring in as much intellectual capital as we can from all kinds of different perspectives.
[00:08:45] Dr. Yasmine Kalkstein: I think one advantage of our team too, is that at this point, we're all civilians.
[00:08:49] Dr. Yasmine Kalkstein: Although a couple of us are retired military, but it gives us, I think the advantage of. Being able to have a long view and understanding that what we're creating, we're not just creating for our rotation, but [00:09:00] that we're planning on all being here for
[00:09:01] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: awhile. That's right. So the great there's multiple advantages of having civilians on our team, particularly civilians without much military experience.
[00:09:13] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: And some people might say, well, why would you bring somebody in without military experience to come develop character at west? And my answer would be that we have a lot of faculty members who've been in the army for a long time. So we can still harness that perspective of how character needs to be developed for the profession of arms.
[00:09:36] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: What we needed was some new perspectives, some different perspectives, people who had perspectives that were not constrained by longstanding assumptions or traditions. And this gives us an opportunity to think differently about how to develop character. With the incoming generations of cadets and many of our [00:10:00] new CA teammates have taught in civilian colleges.
[00:10:03] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: And so they're very familiar with how college age youth of today think about these issues. So we are very excited about. The fact that our team is mostly of civilians with no military experience. It brings a level of creativity and energy that I'm not sure we would have otherwise had. And longevity is important.
[00:10:29] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: The thing about character development, character growth, there's no quick fixes to this. It's a slow, steady, incremental process. Very few instantaneous transformation. Programs. So we need the stability of people who can set up assessments assess over time. So we get some longitudinal expertise in assessments happening on our different programs.
[00:10:56] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: So the stability, the expertise, the new [00:11:00] perspectives, this is all essential to what we're trying to. When
[00:11:03] Dr. Yasmine Kalkstein: I started here, one thing that surprised me was when I discovered on the team that we were going to have a holistic wellness integrator and a wellness advisor on the academic side, in addition to spiritual wellness advisor.
[00:11:17] Dr. Yasmine Kalkstein: And over time, I've come to understand the relationship between wellness and character. But I was wondering if you could share
[00:11:22] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: that. Sure. So this there's a lot of questions on this. Why are we combining character and wellness under one umbrella? I would say there's a couple of things. That drive this. The first is our general approach for character.
[00:11:37] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: Education is a virtue ethics framework where the goal of character education is to cultivate virtues within individuals. And the whole purpose of living virtuously is to flourish in your life. And if you flourish in your life, then your organization, your team is also going to flourish. Well, a significant part of [00:12:00] flourishing is that you're well, that you're spiritually well, physically, well, mentally and emotionally.
[00:12:08] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: Well, and so the connections here between flourishing and wellness seem pretty obvious. The second big connection. Is that when it comes to behaving virtuously, it is much my experience. And I think the evidence would show is that it's much easier or much more likely to do the virtuous. Action. If you are well.
[00:12:37] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: So for example, it's much harder for me to resist temptations when I'm tired, when I'm under stress, when I haven't exercised appropriately. And so an important part of my ability to act virtuously on a consistent basis is that I'm well, and I'm at my full capacity to [00:13:00] choose to do the right thing. At the right time for the right reason, that's ultimately what we are trying to get to develop our cadets to do.
[00:13:09] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: So I think that's the connection.
[00:13:12] Dr. Yasmine Kalkstein: When I first came to west point, I had a very positive view of character and I discovered that character at west point was often the way we thought of the response to problems that. We see whether it's issues in academic integrity or issues with sexual harassment or assault.
[00:13:30] Dr. Yasmine Kalkstein: In other words, it was a very sort of training focused, responding to the immediate problems. And I think one of the things that I've really enjoyed from your perspective is that you want our team to really focus on going upstream of the problems and really focusing on character. Can you explain the difference a little bit between those two approaches?
[00:13:51] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: What is often the case is that we have an incident of dishonorable behavior. And our first reaction is to [00:14:00] come up with a program to prevent that behavior. And it's mainly focused really in behavioral modification. Some combination of training rewards and punishments, hoping to reduce that behavior in the short run.
[00:14:14] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: Now I do want to be clear. That's an important part of character development. I mean, Aristotelian virtue ethics is that you develop habits and sometimes you have to incentivize those habits and punish bad behavior and reward. Good. But that can't be it because that's not a lifelong change. And while it's important that our cadets act virtuously while they're cadets, our real mission is to prepare them to lead honorably in the.
[00:14:45] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: And so we need to give them something a little deeper than behavioral compliance. So these issues that we have with compliance with the honor code there's issues with sexual harassment, sexual assault, there's potential issues for [00:15:00] racist behavior for bias, and then there's issues related to wellness and resiliency.
[00:15:07] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: And so as you look at the challenges that we're facing, And the time and resources we have available, it's really unsustainable to have separate prevention programs for each one of these that are going to be effective. And so we wanted to get more to the root cause as you put it, the upstream piece, how do we develop cadets?
[00:15:31] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: To master or develop the virtues in their life so that these downstream problems don't manifest themselves. If we develop the virtue of honesty, then we are developing an internalized adherence to the honor code. If we develop the virtue of respect, then we. Develop a lifelong habit of treating people the way they should be [00:16:00] treated.
[00:16:01] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: If we develop a virtue of perseverance, now we've enabled a cadet. Act resilience or act with resilience or demonstrate resilience for the rest of their life. And if they can manage this at the individual level, then they can go on to the next level, which is to lead organizations that do the same thing.
[00:16:23] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: So we want to get to the root causes of a lot of these behavioral problems, and we believe that that's character driven.
[00:16:33] Dr. Yasmine Kalkstein: This is a good segue to one of our big initiatives this year, which is our pilot character growth seminar. And that's really focused on getting to those root causes as you explained.
[00:16:45] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: Right? So the, the character growth seminars is a pilot program. That's a new way of delivering character education to develop virtues related to honor related to character and related to personal [00:17:00] relationships. And so it's a total of 72 cadets. We were doing this pilot with two different companies, a meeting once a week and taking them through a curriculum that is a little bit of new knowledge, but mainly an opportunity to reflect on how these virtues are manifested in their own life.
[00:17:21] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: To talk about it in an environment that is psychologically safe. So people can say what's on their mind. And it's under the direction of a trained faculty member from either the character integration team assignment center and from our sexual harassment and assault response program, our sharp program.
[00:17:43] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: And so this is evolving. This is the first time we've ever tried to do anything like this. We're making adjustments as we go. It looks promising. Initial feedback is fairly positive, but we do need to. Be serious and deliberate [00:18:00] about the assessment, because we don't want to just pursue an initiative because it sounds good.
[00:18:04] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: We want to pursue an initiative because it is good and it is achieving what we want it to achieve. So we're in the middle of that. It's I think it's pretty exciting. It's integrating some of the best theory on character education and character development. We've got great people teaching it. And so I'm excited about the.
[00:18:22] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: And you
[00:18:22] Dr. Yasmine Kalkstein: and I are going to get to teach it next
[00:18:24] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: semester. That's right. That's right. So there's, I guess this old saying that if you really want to know something, you should try to teach it. Right. And so both you and I have a lot of experience in this, but. I've actually never taught plebes. I've taught yearlings, I've taught cows and I taught a lot of Firsties, but it's going to be a little different teaching plebes that are just in a different part of their life, a different part of the experience and, and trying to, for the portion that I'll be teaching to help them embrace the tenants of the honor code, which.
[00:18:59] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: You know, they seem [00:19:00] easy on the surface, but they're not always that easy, particularly the toleration clause where you have this conflict between virtues of loyalty and honesty, that caused a lot of challenges, not just for young people, they caused a lot of challenges for everybody, but it's especially acute when you're trying to get started and establish yourself at west point for
[00:19:21] Dr. Yasmine Kalkstein: the pilot, we actually divided the.
[00:19:23] Dr. Yasmine Kalkstein: Into two modules. So the first one, well, they're interchangeable actually. One of them is honor, and one of them's integrity. So you're going to be working on the honor side. Right? Right. And do you want to talk about what that part is about?
[00:19:37] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: So the honor side is rooted in this concept that we call professional character.
[00:19:42] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: It's. What are the virtues that are particularly important for effectively serving in the profession of arms, the army profession? And it integrates those professional virtues are what we're categorizing as martial virtues with the foundational [00:20:00] aspect of honor at west point, which is the honor code. So an important part of this honor module.
[00:20:07] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: Is that a, they understand the context and purpose of why they're here. Why west point is concerned about character white characters important for the profession, but then to dig deep into the honor code itself, each of the four tenants. So the lying, cheating, stealing tolerating, we dig deep into what they mean, why they're important, but not just why they're important as.
[00:20:35] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: But why they're important as a person and as a member of the army profession. And so the whole idea here is to get past this notion that the honor code is something to fear that the honor code is all about compliance and that somehow the honor code doesn't apply. Once you get out into the army, that the goal here is to help them understand the [00:21:00] why and the purpose.
[00:21:02] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: And then hopefully that results in an internalization of the honor code, the honor system and the professional ethic as a foundation for moving forward. Because once you get the, get these virtues developed other seem to flow naturally from them. So
[00:21:22] Dr. Yasmine Kalkstein: I've had the opportunity to sit in on a couple of those classes.
[00:21:26] Dr. Yasmine Kalkstein: And I think what I really enjoyed was the use of. Case studies, both positive ones, but also ones where you can see what are the ramifications of what at that moment might seem like a small breach of honesty, right? How could that down the road have an effect? And so what I really have enjoyed about the case studies that have been brought in is it's taking it beyond west point, right?
[00:21:49] Dr. Yasmine Kalkstein: It's into the army. Why is this so important for ultimately the profession that you're going to be in, but I'll also share one more thing. I really enjoyed. The [00:22:00] scenarios that the cadets are given to try to respond to and discuss. And one of the ones that I gotta be honest, it's still weighing on my mind is you go to someone's house and they make a souffle, and then they ask, what did you think of the souffle?
[00:22:13] Dr. Yasmine Kalkstein: And you really didn't like it. What do you do? And I think sitting there and even just debating what. You know, it's really perhaps a white lie, perhaps, you know, you're trying to keep from insulting this person, but at the same time, how do you handle it as a west point cadet? That was a really fun scenario to debate that, that I'm still thinking
[00:22:34] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: about.
[00:22:35] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: Well, what's interesting about that scenario. I mean, we, we all run into these challenges all the time. And it's a, it's a conflict between two virtues. So it's the conflict of a virtue of honesty versus a virtue of compassion or kindness, right? You don't want to hurt and an appreciation of gratitude for somebody's hospitality and effort to make a wonderful [00:23:00] meal that maybe didn't turn out.
[00:23:01] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: So well, at least in your opinion. So it's this competition between different virtues. Which leads us to one of the overarching goals of. The Aristotelian virtue ethics is this Metta virtue, intellectual virtue of phronesis, which is the ability to sit back and apply some practical wisdom. What is the most virtuous course of action decision in this particular case?
[00:23:31] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: And in general, Most people think that kindness and compassion is probably more important than the complete rigid honesty in that particular case. And that's okay because the world is a morally complex place. The reason we want to develop phronesis is because not just in social [00:24:00] situations, but in.
[00:24:02] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: Battle situations in army leadership situations. We're constantly running into these cases where virtues collide, where we have to make some trade-offs. And so we have to develop these habits of thinking through how do you apply this virtue ethics framework to come up with the most virtuous. Course of action possible and it's not easy and people will disagree about it.
[00:24:28] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: People will debate it. And all of that is fine, but that's all part of character development. And that's why it takes a long time because you have to keep practicing, keep thinking through all these different scenarios.
[00:24:41] Dr. Yasmine Kalkstein: Yeah. I think what I appreciated in that scenario was actually hearing some sample dialogue words that you can use that you can still feel honest, but you can still.
[00:24:52] Dr. Yasmine Kalkstein: Feel that you're being kind, which actually kind of brings me to the next half of the course, which is more focused on relational skills, which is the integrity side of the [00:25:00] course. So that part of the course starts out with the way it's structured right now, gaining more of an awareness of yourself so that you can determine.
[00:25:10] Dr. Yasmine Kalkstein: How you align with army values, where you need to do work in order to align better with the profession. And then it moves into the relational skills piece. How do you see character and relational skills being
[00:25:22] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: related? So the first step that you mentioned is really the self-awareness right before you can think about developing your own character.
[00:25:32] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: One of the most difficult things to do is to be honest about the state of your own character, what do you really believe? So we can provide cadets definitions of army values, but if they don't stop and think about it and think about how they are important or not in their life at that moment, it's really hard to know where to go.
[00:25:56] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: So the first thing is self-awareness so that you understand where your [00:26:00] weaknesses are so that you can develop yourself in effective and important ways. So that's the first part that I think is great about this integrity block, but the second part of this. Is that you want to have the right virtues so that you can be trustworthy so that you can build and lead a cohesive team to build and lead a cohesive team.
[00:26:23] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: You need some relational skills. You need the ability to communicate. You need the ability to have empathy. You need the ability to actively listen. And so these are the skills necessary to enable. Inclusive leadership, which is rooted in virtues, virtues of empathy, compassion, kindness, concern, respect. And so that's how this all fits together.
[00:26:54] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: It's great to have the virtues, but you also need to have the skills that enable you to [00:27:00] actually. Perform the virtuous behavior. And so that's why I think this course is pretty powerful. We've, we've discovered that cadet sometimes struggle with resolving conflict. They sometimes struggle with interpersonal communication.
[00:27:14] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: So to have an opportunity to practice it in a non-threatening environment, I think is an important part of character development.
[00:27:23] Dr. Yasmine Kalkstein: It's not just cadets. Right? I think it's this generation. And especially having been relatively isolated for the last year and a half, it's something that I think as a society, we're seeing that we need to put more emphasis on relational skills and college aged kids.
[00:27:38] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: I think it's been quite a shock for people after several months of essentially communicating over the phone or FaceTime or zoom or whatever,
[00:27:50] Dr. Yasmine Kalkstein: or text.
[00:27:53] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: That the interpersonal piece can feel a little uncomfortable. There's a certain amount of security of being able to just turn [00:28:00] off the camera or to go mute.
[00:28:01] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: You can escape if you need to, but when it's face to face conversation, it's much more difficult. And then there's also this importance of reading non-verbals. Most of our communication is through nonverbal, facial expressions, hand gestures. And if you don't know how to interpret those. You may not understand how the conversation is going.
[00:28:23] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: So having an opportunity to develop those skills in a non-threatening environment is really important that I think we really have to emphasize this non-threatening environment. Because another thing that we have we sometimes forget is that the stakes are high for these young men and women, because if they do something wrong, It's quite possible that it'll be on social media and all over the place.
[00:28:48] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: So what used to be, you know, if Jeff Peterson makes a mistake, a few of his classmates might make fun of them and okay. That's pretty much where it goes. Now it's everywhere. And [00:29:00] that's high stakes environment for social capital, which for young people is very important for all of it. All of us it's really important, but it's especially important when you're young and forming your identity and trying to figure out how to navigate.
[00:29:15] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: Sometimes crazy place called west point.
[00:29:17] Dr. Yasmine Kalkstein: I think when I look at the courses coming up in character growth seminar on the integrity side, it's these are topics that I struggle with. For example, setting boundaries, giving feedback to people. The on the honor side, our cadets were recently challenged with having to correct someone else's behavior without telling them I'm doing this for a course.
[00:29:42] Dr. Yasmine Kalkstein: Those are not easy things for many people to do.
[00:29:45] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: No, I, this is a great point. I'm glad you brought this up because sometimes it's easy to make this a generational. That we just need to fix this new generation somehow. And this'll take care of all of our character [00:30:00] problems or our behavior problems. And that's just not, it's just not the case.
[00:30:05] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: And one thing we try to emphasize is this character development is a lifelong effort and communication is hard for everybody. Resolving conflict is hard for everybody. And this also leads to another part of this character program. This character pillar and our character culture is that it's not just the cadets that need to continue growing in the space.
[00:30:30] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: The staff and faculty also need to continue growing. I continue to grow in this space and that's the beauty of it is that what we're teaching cadets now is not limited to their time as. What we're hoping is that we lay the foundation for lifelong character growth for continuing to develop in ways that are important, not just as a person, but as an officer, and then for service [00:31:00] beyond the military.
[00:31:01] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: I mean, this, these issues, or about as much about being good people and good leaders in any organization, that's not just limited to being an awful.
[00:31:14] Dr. Yasmine Kalkstein: So we also have some initiatives that we have put into cadet, summer training as well. So with a cadet basic training this summer, we started having the cadets journal as a squad every night. How did that idea come about? And what is, was character education say about journaling?
[00:31:32] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: So there's really two sources of this particular idea.
[00:31:36] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: The primary source was command Sergeant major Killingsworth who is the USCC command Sergeant major. And he got this idea from two places. One is the ranger assessment program had some problems with completion rates of their program, and the attrition was much higher than they thought it [00:32:00] should. And they did some analysis and realized that part of the problem was that their rasp students did not have enough time.
[00:32:14] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: To either connect with their teammates or connect with their leaders in a meaningful way. And so they didn't feel like they were getting the support, they needed to complete the program. So that was one source. The other sources that the army has started a new program at basic training called the first hundred yards.
[00:32:34] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: And the focus is on team building and cohesion. As opposed to what used to be called a shark attack, where it's just break the person down and then try to build them up. It's now the first a hundred yards, which is still just, is rigorous physically and mentally, but the focus is not on tearing people down.
[00:32:54] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: It's about building the team. So those are the two things from command Sergeant major Killingsworth from [00:33:00] the character education piece. Two critical components, actually three critical components. One is just virtue, literacy teaching and learning the language of how to talk about character and what it means.
[00:33:13] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: The second is an opportunity to reflect. So at the individual level, you can stop and think about all the things that are happening and why they're important to you. And then the third piece is that you talk about it with the small group so that you create trust by being vulnerable, by learning about others, you don't feel alone.
[00:33:33] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: And so this helps to build the cohesion in a meaningful way. So we piloted this program. The commandant general Quander was incredibly supportive of it as was the brigade, or I'm sorry, the DMI six Colonel Al Boyer, the head of the department of military instruction. Very supportive. And so what this turned into, we gave every new cadet, a book that was a form [00:34:00] of journaling that had a lot of structured information.
[00:34:04] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: And the goal was every night for one hour to have some combination of journaling, which required reflection and then talking about it. So this was the first summer did we, did we bat a thousand? No. Did we get every squad meeting every night? No, we didn't, but we did a whole lot better than we've done in the past.
[00:34:26] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: And I think what you'll see, and we have, these are somewhat subjective assessments. One is the new cadets responded positively to it. The squad leaders recognize that this is an important skill to have, and they realize now that facilitating these types of discussions really are a leader task. And then the initial indicators are that the cohesion in the class of 25 is higher than what we've seen in other classes.
[00:34:57] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: Now that's somewhat subjective. We have more work to [00:35:00] do on the assessment there, but the leading indicators are pretty good. So
[00:35:04] Dr. Yasmine Kalkstein: Jeff has be wrapped things up as you look to the future. What do you think character education at west point could look like? Let's say 2, 3, 4 years from now.
[00:35:14] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: It's a very good question.
[00:35:16] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: And when I think about. How this whole design can work. I really think about how we can support the superintendents lines of effort. So his line of effort, one is to develop leaders of character. And I think the character education piece to that is that we have a 47 month. Opportunity to develop character that meets cadets, where they are, and then whatever the starting point takes them to a place where by the time they commissioned, they're ready to fulfill those moral responsibilities of the office and to build and lead cohesive teams.
[00:35:59] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: And so [00:36:00] what I would imagine is that. As a cadet starts on our day, they will begin this process that continues for 47 months. That gives them the opportunity to assess themselves, to receive peer assessment, to reflect, to learn about what character is and then how to develop the phronesis that we talked about earlier over time.
[00:36:24] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: So final vision somehow, a 47 month. Deliberate holistic and progressive character education processes in place. The second piece is on the line of effort to which is cultivate a culture of character. There's multiple aspects to culture, but I think our most critical one is that we need to make sure that cadets and faculty are both prepared and ready to facilitate the kinds of discussions that are required in this space.[00:37:00]
[00:37:00] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: And that takes some deliberate effort. That means that we're going to have to designate some cadets to be peer facilitators that will go through some additional. Education to take them to that level where they can facilitate. And I believe that's a great leader task that prepares them to be more effective officers in the army.
[00:37:19] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: And I also think that our staff and faculty can improve in their ability to facilitate these kinds of discussions. And this is a little bit counterintuitive because we hire the best people to come to west point and teach and they teach their disciplines and they serve as tactical officers. Very well.
[00:37:39] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: But there is an identified and express. Level of discomfort on talking about these kinds of issues. These are difficult issues to talk about virtue, sexual harassment, sexual assault, bias, prejudice, wellness, suicide prevention. These can be uncomfortable topics, and we just need to be more [00:38:00] comfortable as, as we facilitate these discussions and help cadets grow.
[00:38:04] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: The last thing I would say in terms of a long-term vision for the Seattle itself, is that in my mind it would be. Incredibly valuable for the CFO to become an intellectual source for character education, not just for west point, but for the army, all these programs, all these ideas that we're attempting to design, we're always keeping an eye towards how do we scale this in ways?
[00:38:34] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: Might be able to support the Army's effort at character development and dealing with some of these dishonorable behaviors. So it would be. Incredibly beneficial. If this nucleus of 10 people could harness all kinds of intellectual capital within the academy and external to the academy to help design design programs that develop [00:39:00] character and then ways to assess character development so that we know we're being effective.
[00:39:05] Dr. Jeffrey Peterson: If we can do that for the army. Then that's a huge vision. And that's a way that west point as an intellectual capital center for the army can help the army resolve some of these very difficult problems over the longterm. And so I think that would be great, but the CA become an intellectual hub for character development that facilitates not just west point's mission, but the Army's mission.
[00:39:34] Narrator: Um, point is a production of the WPA O G broadcast network. Please take a moment to rate and review the show and join us each week for a new episode. Thank you for listening.