Leadership Expert Offers Advice to Embry-Riddle Students

As retired Lt. Col. Oakland McCulloch, 2019 national winner of the U.S. Army ROTC Recruiter of the Year award, considers his successes as a leader and mentor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, his advice to students embarking on their careers is to focus on others.

“Be a servant leader. Make your leadership style about people because that is what the privilege of leadership is all about — and it is a privilege to lead,” McCulloch said. “Every day, pick out one person in your organization and find out something new about them. Not about work but about them personally.”

Lt. Col. Jerome Reitano, commanding officer of Embry-Riddle’s Daytona Beach Army ROTC program — which was just named the top program in the Southeast, as well as among eight winners nationally of the 2022 Douglas MacArthur Award — credited much of the program’s success to McCulloch.

“If you talk to parents and students about Lt. Col. McCulloch, you’ll see that 75 to 90% of the cadets are here because of this individual. The success of our program all came down to him going out late at night, over the weekends and all over,” Reitano said.

A 23-year veteran of the U.S. Army with 31 military honors, McCulloch came to Embry-Riddle in 2011 and has served as a recruiting officer for the past 10 years. When McCulloch took over the recruiting office, the program had 165 cadets. It now has about 250 cadets each year. McCulloch is the author of the 2021 book “Your Leadership Legacy: Becoming the Leader You Were Meant To Be.”

The accomplishment of which McCulloch is proudest resides in the students he has helped along their way, he said.

“I have had the privilege to influence young men and women — hundreds of them — to be better people and leaders,” he said.