Psczulkoski ’27: Call to Duty Scholarship Recipient

“It made my world.”

That’s how Cadet Aiden Psczulkoski ’27 describes receiving VMI’s Call to Duty scholarship, which made his top-choice school possible by covering room and board and lifting the financial burden left after his U.S. Air Force ROTC scholarship covered tuition.

This aid inspires Psczulkoski, a physics and mathematics double major, to make the most of cadetship and strengthens his connection with the alumni supporting him.

From the time he visited the Institute as a high school senior, Psczulkoski knew the Institute was for him. “I loved it. It felt like I was at home,” he said. He especially appreciated VMI’s values of hard work, the honor system, and the military training preparing him for his future career. “A lot of the values that I appreciate and I feel like I work toward are valued very highly here,” said Psczulkoski.

Arriving at VMI with 38 college credits from dual enrollment courses, which would have fulfilled his credit requirements by 2nd Class year, Psczulkoski chose to challenge himself further by double majoring. Living out his values for hard work, he is also an Institute Honors program participant, a Bravo cadre corporal, and a club golf team member.

The support from his departments and VMI’s small class sizes help Psczulkoski keep up with the demands of his course loads. “I love the physics and math departments here. The professors are incredible,” said Psczulkoski. Growing up in the small town of Arcanum, Ohio, with a graduating class of just 90 students, he appreciates the personalized learning that VMI’s small class sizes provide. “I think my biggest class is 20 students, and my smallest is maybe 10. It’s very much one-on-one time, and you really get the opportunity to understand the material and get to know your professors.”

Psczulkoski has also found further academic resources all around post. “The support systems at VMI are also great with the Writing Center, the open math lab, and then all the cadet tutoring that they have. All of those make it much easier to succeed, and using those has helped me a lot.”

Helping him meet the daily challenges of Corps life are his bonds with his brother rats. “Having that [brother rat] support system really drove me to keep going,” he said. The other driving factor for Psczulkoski is VMI’s alumni, whose support motivates him to honor their legacy and belief in cadets like himself. “It’s an incredible feeling knowing that this is one of the only schools where alumni are constantly supporting it like they do and are able to help kids like me get into the school they really want to get into,” said Psczulkoski. “It means a lot knowing that they have faith in the incoming matriculating classes. And it also makes me want to push myself more, to show them, hey, these kids are doing a great job here at VMI, sort of fulfilling what they’ve done in the past.”

With over 2 years left of cadetship and plans to commission into the Air Force, Psczulkoski is excited for the future and grateful to the alumni whose support and guidance are making it possible. “At VMI, you kind of have to live it to know it, which is very interesting because looking at VMI from the outside, you would never tell anybody to go there at a very surface level,” said Psczulkoski. “It doesn’t look great, but I think what made me want to go was the alumni I knew and then those connections that were able to vouch for that and tell me, ‘yes, this is the place that will make you do great things.’”