Class of 2024: Cadet Shelby Stevens speaks softly and makes an impact

Name: Shelby Stevens

College: Agriculture and Life Sciences

Major: Agriculture business  

Hometown: Dinwiddie, Virginia

Plans after graduation: Work as an agriculture intelligence technician with Helena-Agri

Favorite Hokie memory: “My biggest Hokie memory is from the second semester of my junior year during Caldwell March. That was the culminating event of our hard work and dedication to our first-year cadets, and then coming back and seeing them as sophomores and fire team leaders during the fall semester. It was very rewarding to see them succeeding in their cadet careers.”

Stevens was familiar with Virginia Tech before coming to school here. Her family has long been Hokies, including her older sister, Michaela, who graduated from the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets in 2019.

“Virginia Tech has always been a second home for me because we always came up for football games and Michaela’s events in the corps. I applied for the corps because I saw the opportunities that my sister had here,” said Stevens.  

Raised by her family with a service mindset, Stevens started her cadet experience amidst COVID restrictions in the fall of 2020 after taking a gap year to serve as an FFA state official.  

But she struggled during her first year, having graduated high school before COVID restrictions hit and then being fully immersed for the first time in online classes for her first semester in college.

“I really struggled to get into the swing of things academically, and the culture shock of being a first-year cadet in the corps was tough. I knew how things had worked in the past in the corps through my sister’s experience, but with COVID, all of that was put in the blender,” Stevens said.

Through the stress of the first-year cadet experience, early academic struggles, and a healthy dose of uncertainty from a global pandemic, Stevens credits the close-knit cadets of Kilo Company with helping her get settled and finding her voice in the corps.

“I had a great bud class. They are people that got me through, that helped me with that transition. If I didn't have them, things would have been a lot different,” said Stevens. 

She also recognizes that being in the corps’ Citizen-Leader Track allowed her to continue to flourish as a cadet and plan for a non-military career after graduation.

“I really honed into the opportunities that the Citizen-Leader Track offered. It allowed me to stay here and be surrounded by a bunch of like-minded people, so I was very grateful for that,” Stevens said.

Slowly, she began finding her voice. Her sophomore year, she led a small team of first-year cadets and then jumped in with both feet by becoming a company first sergeant her junior year.

“I had always been on the quiet side. I didn’t speak up for myself or what I was thinking. But here I chose the people I surrounded myself with and the leaders I looked up to really changed how I thought about myself. They gave me the confidence to speak up for myself and my ideas. I embraced the leadership side of Shelby Stevens instead of the girl that just followed the crowd.” 

By her senior year, the crowd was following her. Stevens commanded the 80 cadets of Bravo Company during the fall semester. In part through her leadership during the first half of the academic year, last month Bravo Company was named the top cadet company in the corps this year, earning the coveted Beverly S. Parrish Jr. award, denoted by the gold-colored cord worn on Bravo cadet uniforms. Stevens spent her last semester in the corps in command of 1st Battalion’s 295 cadets.  

Through it all, Stevens remains humble and avoids the spotlight. Her hope in sharing her cadet experience is to inspire anyone who shares her quiet traits and to help them find their voice and place in their college experience.

"The corps helped me not only to become a better person, but to be more confident. My goal is for someone that I influenced here to remember that and what I taught them 20 years from now, taking the extra second to double check something, remembering the attention to detail that I tried to impart.” 

Col. Craig Alia, deputy commandant for 1st Battalion, has worked with Stevens since her sophomore year. “Shelby is a worker. No matter the challenge and no matter the task, she is willing to outwork everyone else. She finds solutions to hard problems, she invests in people, and she leads by personal example in every aspect of her life. Nothing has ever come easy for her, and nothing has been given to her. She’s worked and earned everything she has. She gets her work ethic from her mother and father and her grandparents; they are her role models and her inspiration. Shelby makes those around her better and I am proud to serve beside her,” said Alia.