Joel Andrus ’04: Why I VMI

Joel Andrus ’04 had no plan to come to VMI until his parents drove onto post out of curiosity. It was summer 1997, and the Andrus family just happened to be in the area vacationing when VMI was centered in the national spotlight over the admission of women. The Parade Ground was ringed with satellite trucks that Matriculation Week, with big-name media figures accompanying them, so the Andruses decided to go take a look.

They didn’t know it when they drove up Letcher Avenue, but their casual visit would change the course of their 15-year-old son’s life. “I remember walking onto [post] for the first time and seeing the whole VMI experience, and my thought was, ‘I want to come here;’ I wanted to be a part of this,” Andrus related. Older friends had attended VMI, and their stories added to the allure of taking an unconventional path.

“I wanted the challenge,” Andrus stated. “I appreciated the challenge. But I think maybe mostly what drew me to VMI was the sense of belonging, the camaraderie that was created through the shared experience.” In the end, VMI was the only school Andrus applied to.

Today, Andrus is VMI Alumni Association Board of Directors vice president, having served on and off as a board member since 2013, both as a director at large and the Region XIII Hampton Roads regional director. “I remember when I first graduated, I wanted to get involved pretty early on because I recognized how much VMI had done for me and how much the VMI network had done for me,” Andrus commented. “I wanted to be able to give back and, more importantly, give that same opportunity to cadets.”

Andrus is appreciative of all the opportunities his cadetship gave him. He helped found New Cadet Military Training with then-Corps Sgt. Maj. Neel, a program for new cadets that culminated in a multiday land navigation exercise through the George Washington National Forest. He also enjoyed being part of the Timmins-Gentry Music Society, as that group traveled to concerts each year, and he recalls learning from well-remembered professors such as the late Col. William Badgett ’53 and Col. Alan Baragona, then-professor of English.

After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and a minor in philosophy, Andrus found his way to the consulting field. He currently works for Kemper Consulting as a state government relations professional. VMI’s English major “really served me well for what I currently do because it’s a lot of reading, writing, and analytical thinking,” Andrus stated.

Andrus’ path to giving back as an alum has its roots in a longtime family friendship with Bob Heely ’69, a former Alumni Association Board of Directors president. “He was the one that really encouraged me to get involved and get engaged, particularly in the new cadet recruiting side, and I knew that was something I wanted to do anyway,” Andrus commented.

“He helped me figure out where to get involved and where the needs were locally. And once I started doing new cadet recruiting, I got involved with young alumni, planning young alumni events and doing that type of work, and then a little bit of career networking, and that kind of morphed into an opening on the board a number of years later, and then became a regional director.”

These days, Andrus is busy juggling family and professional responsibilities, but he’s never too busy to help VMI—or an alum. “It’s really great and extremely gratifying when somebody calls you who’s looking for a job, looking to transition out of a career, and you can pick up the phone and make a few phone calls, and you have this whole network of people who are just always willing to jump in and help,” he commented. “And there’s never a time when you encounter roadblocks with the VMI community.”

What’s more, Andrus treasures VMI’s shared experiences, which are the glue that binds alumni together. It’s the natural result of the same camaraderie that attracted him as a high schooler almost a quarter century ago. “You have motifs of your cadet experience that roll through your head,” he stated. “It becomes not so much a timeline of your experience, but a feeling about sharing that experience with your brother rats and sharing that experience with the people around you. And I think it’s one of the things that really makes VMI great is being able to have those connections to people that are five to 10 years difference from you or even more. … That’s part of what makes VMI, VMI.”