The Post-9/11 GI Bill has brought to colleges not only legions of veterans, but awareness of the need for dedicated services to help them reintegrate and succeed, Meg Krause, associate director for military programs at the American Council on Education, said here on Tuesday at a session of the council’s annual meeting.
A panel of counselors and advisers who work with student veterans shared promising practices they had tried in the past couple of years, since receiving $100,000 Success for Veterans grants from ACE and the Wal-Mart Foundation. Making students feel welcome, acknowledging their service, and connecting them with one another and the rest of the campus—both people and resources—were common refrains.
California State University at Sacramento shifted the focus of a summer program for veterans from remedial education to leadership development, scheduling the event so it didn’t conflict with the orientation for all students. Building relationships with classmates has become a main goal of the Sacramento campus’s Student Veteran Organization, whose members have cosponsored activities with the university’s Multi-Cultural Center, Pride Center, and Women’s Resource Center.
“They want to be recognized in the same light as the other underrepresented groups on campus,” said Jeff Weston, director of the campus’s Veteran Success Center.
Before the creation of that center in 2008, services were limited to the certification of veterans’ benefits and were provided out of a hidden cubicle, Mr. Weston said. “We were buried in the registrar’s office behind a locked door behind another locked door.”
Greater visibility has helped establish connections across the campus, he said. The success center now conducts trainings with faculty and staff to identify “vet-friendly zones,” where students, seeing stickers on doors, can expect to find at least basic knowledge of post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, as well as the understanding that those conditions are not stigmatizing or unique to veterans.
The center also helped to develop a social-work course first offered last fall: “Exploration of Veteran Studies: an Ethnographic Approach.” Students without a military background who enrolled have become some of the strongest advocates for student veterans, Mr. Weston said.
Southwestern College in Chula Vista, Calif., has also developed alliances—in its case, between counselors and student veterans. Formerly the college tried to serve veterans from its general student-counseling center, but they weren’t going, said Richard Townsend, a clinical psychologist who works at the college. Instead he and another psychologist, Randi Cooper, now attend meetings of the student-veteran group, as well as other events: a holiday trip to decorate veterans’ rooms at a nearby hospital, for example, and a recent five-kilometer run to support Veterans of Foreign Wars.
“We’re not trying to be vets, but we’re trying to be part of what’s important to them,” Mr. Townsend said.
Ms. Cooper emphasized the importance of communicating regularly with local Veterans Affairs officials, to build credibility and trust with each student who might want to talk. “If I don’t have a relationship with those people, I’m going to be useless to that vet,” she said. “And if I’m useless to that vet, I’m useless with all of them.”
Student veterans share information with one another, and Keith Stevenson, another speaker on the panel, has tried to take advantage of that at Onondaga Community College, in Syracuse, N.Y. “They’re used to working as a team, helping their buddies, watching their backs,” he said.
Mr. Stevenson, technical assistant in the college’s Office of Veterans’ Affairs, hires work-study students and promotes peer mentorship. Having a dedicated space for student veterans, as Onondaga does, goes a long way, he said. A student can come in more or less overwhelmed by institutional policies, meet a classmate, and realize “Oh, good, somebody can show me the ropes.”
A couple of combat veterans have gone with Mr. Stevenson to answer questions from the college’s adjunct faculty. For example, do you want to be recognized as a veteran or not? The goal of their visit was to develop more understanding among instructors, Mr. Stevenson said. “You could tell there was a real interest.”
Involving students in campus advocacy is key, said Daniel Wilson, a student veteran at the University of California at Santa Cruz. “They’re going to be the ones to really drive change.”
A provost in the audience said that his small, private institution wanted to offer veterans’ services but that officials there weren’t sure where to start. “Go to your student veterans on your campus,” Mr. Wilson said. “Ask them what they need. Ask them what they’re missing.”
Often, said Ms. Krause of ACE, helpful support services already exist—administrators just need to reach out to students and direct them. The council, with help from the Wal-Mart and Kresge Foundations, plans to release an online “tool kit” to disseminate ideas for serving student veterans from all 20 colleges that received the grants.