The 2025 class is the first to be under a new dean and chancellor with the emphasis on becoming a servant leader at the post level.
The 2025 National American Legion College class got underway Sunday, Nov. 16, in Indianapolis at American Legion National Headquarters where the 54 students have recited a servant leadership promise from Day 1.
As a servant leader I will:
Listen with empathy
Lift up the voices around me
Lead by example, with humility and purpose.
“You should hear it as it’s just as loud as they say the Pledge of Allegiance,” said National American Legion College Dean Mike Rohan. “It's a very basic part of what servant leadership is, but they're promising that's what they're going do every day. What we're doing with it is training them to be conscious of the fact that they're becoming servant leaders every day.”
The principles and practices of servant leadership are the focal point of National American Legion College now under Rohan and Past National Commander Daniel Seehafer, who serves as chancellor. During his travels as national commander, Seehafer saw the concept of servant leadership in the military.
“It’s putting yourself basically last and others first,” Seehafer said. “You’re caring for your troops, you’re caring for your commander, you’re listening, you’re understanding. Our founder, Teddy Roosevelt, was a servant leader. The guy should have been sitting in the back but he’s out in the front lines running around like he was 18, being a servant leader, carrying for the troops and watching out for them.”
“It's a question that everybody asks about D-Day is how do people keep running as they saw everybody dying in front of them? It’s because of their leader,” Rohan said. “Their leader was teaching them that there was more than themselves. It was America that they were defending there. And if they didn't go, then America would die. And they believed in America enough that they put themselves first. They became servant leaders. And they were following one.”
Rohan and Seehafer spent long hours and weeks expanding upon the past NALC curriculum and writing one with input from the instructors around servant leadership that involves 36 courses with 144 objectives. There are 17 educators from national headquarters staff to department leaders skilled in their teachings of servant leadership instruction.
“We’re a team. Nobody said, ‘What’s in it for me?’ They’re like, how do we advance the mission of The American Legion,” Rohan said. “So this (curriculum) is a product of all of us.”
“We want to make (NALC) about relevance and purpose,” Seehafer said. “And that relevance and purpose is servant leadership. One student said the whole concept of servant leadership, the new change, he was like, this is what we need.”
The American Legion spoke with Seehafer and Rohan about the “why” to incorporate servant leadership into the National American Legion College, how it’s being taught and what they want the students to leave with.
American Legion: What inspired the concept of teaching servant leadership in The American Legion?
Seehafer: We did some research on this when we were doing studies in nonprofit organizations and they were gravitating to this, even in businesses. People have written programs on this already, and nonprofit organizations are thriving on this type of understanding. So we wanted to take this concept that we know is effective in the business world, colleges are teaching it, universities are teaching it, United States military is teaching it. We saw it firsthand, so we wanted to bring it into The American Legion. It just follows the principle of purpose and relevance. We want to be purpose driven. We want to be relevant. And this is relevant. And we believe that it will follow what we've been talking about from (Past National Commander James) LaCoursiere to myself, and even with (National Commander Dan) Wiley, when we talk about better together and changing and saving lives. That's the bottom line. And so we're taking this understanding at an educational level.
Rohan: This is an investment in education, and that's what the 21st Century Ad-Hoc Committee, that Dan was the chairman of, talks about education and training. And we're focused on the education part of it. When you go in the military as an enlistment to basic training, you go there to learn to be a good servicemember, soldier, sailor, airman or marine. They teach you how to salute, they teach you how to walk, they teach you how to talk, they teach you the traditions and history of their organization. Then you graduate and get sent to a unit. They get to the unit and have somebody there to take all that knowledge and lead them into battle. We don't have that person when they get to their post, we don't have that leader there. So the students coming here to Legion College, we're teaching them how to go back and lead people that have gone to the Training Tuesdays and membership workshops and national convention training who have all this knowledge. We're now creating somebody that can go back and take those people, organize them together, lead them into the battle of The American Legion.
Q: How are you incorporating servant leadership in the courses being taught?
Rohan: We talk about resources and being a good resource person. When I was on active duty, I was a chief warrant officer, appointed by President Reagan as a technical expert in education. I knew everything about education. If I didn't know the answer, I knew where to find the answer. And that's what we're teaching them. Where to find the answer. There’s an answer in one of our manuals (on the national website). So we’re teaching them to be good resources.
Seehafer: And to understand the basics of leadership, I've been pushing the three C’s where you have competence, you have commitment, and then character. Sometimes we're really good at checking the boxes, filling out some report. But it's that next step, that leadership step, and how to care for each other. And that's the focus here, to look at everything that we do through the eyes of making ourselves better. And then to show that that kind of attitude, that character, that competence, that commitment as a leader in whatever they do.
Everything that we teach, they're reflecting upon themselves, they are evaluating themselves, and then applying what they learn to how can I improve myself? And then apply it into the field of helping others. This morning, a student opened up about a very personal issue. That's exactly what we want here too. That was leadership. To let the guard down but in a safe space. I don't think that would have happened without the emphasis of servant leadership. Because we teach those core values of empathy, listening and communication. A lot of communication is listening.
Q: What has the commitment from students been with this new curriculum?
Rohan: We have an instructor whose father died. He was planning a funeral with his sister from his phone here, but still committed to teach. There's a woman dealing with breast cancer. There's another person who came to me yesterday crying that his brother went in the hospital and was probably not going to make it. The point is our lives are happening around us. Every single person has something. They're not saying, ‘I want to go home.’ They found community with a group that they're with right now that they're willing to stay.
Seehafer: They don't want to leave this purpose. This is something that's special. They've been chosen so you see a leadership quality in their commitment. Even though they have forces that are pulling on them, they're still committed. We want to amplify that as a teaching tool as well.
And (Legion College) is a commitment. This is not just a week, and you're done. When we talk about paid up for life, this is like the life commitment. You've really entered a life commitment.
Rohan: And part of their assignment was to come up with a personal leadership action plan. I had a student come to me and say, ‘Is it OK that I’ve taken all of my action items out and got new ones?’ I’m like that’s called growth. Absolutely. We want that. That’s what you love to see as an educator. We have a letter from Chancellor Seehafer that will go to their department commander, their adjutant and their NEC, that says, ‘Here's the 144 learning objectives that your student learned from the 36 courses. And here's what they think their leadership journey through your department is going to be over the next one, three, five years, whatever they marked out as time is a timeline.
Q: What do you want the students to leave with as they go back to their post and department?
Rohan: For me, it's community and resource, that they find their community. Dan and I, and Denise (Rohan, past national commander and wife of Mike) are a community. But we're also a resource. We can call each other.
Seehafer: The whole point of this college for personal growth. We want you to reflect and say, ‘Can I be a better leader?’ But this is not a steppingstone. We want to make that very clear. This is not a steppingstone for your next position. This should be, ‘I want to go here because I want to be prepared to change the life and save the life of a veteran.’ It could also be a family member of a veteran. That's the reason why I want to go here, to be better. Not to get to the next level. It’s for each other. It's for The American Legion. And for them to leave here as a resource and to help. You can say it fits really well with the commander’s (Wiley) theme of better together. And we are together.
- American Legion College