WILLIAMSBURG — Highlighting its role in shaping the nation’s leaders, including educating four U.S. presidents, Williams & Mary has declared 2026 The Year of Civic Leadership.
This is a role that has earned the university the moniker Alma Mater of the Nation, and today, the university said it continues that work as part of its mission to “cultivate creative thinkers, principled leaders and compassionate global citizens equipped for lives of meaning and distinction.”
“From its founding, the university and its people have played a formative role in the life of the republic, understanding leadership as a moral charge,” said Roxane Adler Hickey, assistant provost for leadership & academic engagement and chair of the Year of Civic Leadership steering committee.
Service is one of William & Mary’s core values, it said, and Democracy is a pillar of the Vision 2026 strategic plan. As part of that initiative, the university said it is committed to ensuring the nation’s origin stories are expansive and to teaching the rights and obligations of 21st-century citizenship.
The Year of Civic Leadership will build on those efforts through a coordinated year of learning, dialogue, community-building and signature events that celebrate W&M’s historic role in establishing American democracy, while affirming the university’s ongoing commitment to preparing generations of civic leaders, it added.
“At its core, the Year of Civic Leadership affirms that knowledge carries responsibility — and that wisdom, formed over time, must be placed in service to the common good. At William & Mary, civic leaders listen across difference, reason with care and act with integrity. The Year of Civic Leadership will call on each of us to steward our communities — and the nation — with humility, courage and reverence for what is perpetual and universal,” Hickey added.