The Character Edge: Leading and Winning with Integrity

Lieutenant General Robert L. Caslen, Jr. is the 29th president of the University of South Carolina. Caslen is a retired Army lieutenant general and former superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point. After retiring from the Army in 2018, Caslen became the senior counsel to the president at the University of Central Florida. Caslen grew up in Vermont, worked in his family’s ski lodge, and then was recruited to play football at West Point. Along with his bachelor’s degree from West Point, Caslen holds an MBA in finance from Long Island University and a master’s in industrial engineering from Kansas State University. He and his wife, Shelly, have been married for 42 years and have three sons and four grandchildren.

Michael D. Matthews is Professor of Engineering Psychology at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He served as President of the American Psychological Association’s Society for Military Psychology from 2007 to 2008 and is a Templeton Foundation Senior Positive Psychology Fellow. From 2014 to 2015, he served as a Fellow for the U.S. Army Chief of Staff’s Strategic Studies Group. He has authored more than 250 scientific papers and edited several books on military psychology, and is the author of Head Strong: How Psychology is Revolutionizing War (Oxford University Press, 2014, revised edition, 2020). His book (coedited with David M. Schnyer), Human Performance Optimization: The Science and Ethics of Enhancing Human Capabilities (Oxford University Press) was published in 2019.