Wilson Leadership Fellows Program

Freshman Year
Fellows will become a part of the Martin Leadership Program which includes a pre-term workshop and a series of seminars and workshops on leadership. The purpose of the program is to help students gain a sense of emotional intelligence and social awareness. An increased sense of social awareness will prepare Fellows to lead more thoughtfully when they assume formal leadership roles in student government, athletics, or other campus or community organizations.

Sophomore Year
Fellows will join the Society of ’91, a three-decade old leadership development program dedicated to the premise that “those who would be great are those schooled to serve.” The program endeavors to equip Fellows with skills and abilities needed to effectively assume and carry out current and future leadership responsibilities. Faculty, staff, and alumni seek to help students to live lives exhibiting positive attitudes, behavior, and sound values.

Junior Year
The purpose of year three is to provide Fellows with the opportunity to think and reflect about what it means to live a good life. They will consider how faith, relationships, family life, vocation, service and philanthropy shape personal goals and ambitions. Faculty and staff endeavor to help students develop a meaningful framework to ensure habits and actions are consistent with personal values. We are concerned not only with what our young men want to do, but who they want to be after graduation.

Senior Year
The purpose of year four of the Wilson Fellows program is to support Fellows as they demonstrate their leadership abilities. The program will implement a learn, do, reflect model. Fellows will learn from experienced alumni, community leaders, faculty and staff. They will apply what they have learned in the classroom sessions (using concepts provided as part of the Compass curriculum) to on and off campus service opportunities. Fellows will reflect upon those experiences in order to combine theory and practice.

Soldier. Spy. General. Director. President. Farmer. At one point or another, all those titles referred to Lieutenant General Samuel V. Wilson (USA, Ret.) one of the most revered leaders at Hampden-Sydney College—and its president from 1992 to 2000.

Upon his high school graduation in 1940, young Sam Wilson heard the call of service and enlisted in the Virginia National Guard. Over the course of his career, he rose through the ranks, to serve as a Lieutenant General in the U.S. Army. General Wilson's lengthy career in the Special Forces and military intelligence took him from the WWII-era jungles of Burma, where he fought with the legendary Merrill's Marauders, to the streets of Berlin and Moscow during the Cold War, where he was a leader in U.S. intelligence operations, ultimately serving as deputy director of the CIA and director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

General Wilson's counsel was often sought by leaders including U.S. Presidents Nixon, Carter, Ford, and George H. W. Bush. His leadership and expertise was essential in establishing the Army's elite Delta Force.

General Wilson received an honorary degree from H-SC in 1979, and began teaching courses at the College on national security in 1981. In 1992, he became the 22nd president of the College. General Wilson passed away in June of 2017.