Here Come the Veterans
Mar. 2010
As military service members come home from deployment, many are finding their way to college campuses. These veterans and their families may need special support and financial assistance, but they also bring with them maturity, leadership skills and a deeper understanding of the world than younger, less experienced students. These traits enrich the campus experience for everyone. Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C) and the University of Michigan (UM) have set up veteran services offices to assist students who are in the military.
Ann Hower, director of the Office of New Student Programs at the University of Michigan; Rick DeChant, executive director of Veterans Services & Programs at Tri-C; and Terry Miller, veterans advocate at West Virginia University, presented a session on this important topic. It was moderated by Margaret Rodriguez, senior associate director in the Office of Financial Aid at UM.
The Student Veterans Assistance Program at UM is part of the Office of New Student Programs. The university launched a website, http://www.vets.umich.edu/, and hired a transition specialist in 2008. The program is going strong, serving Tri-C’s active group of student soldiers.
Tri-C is known as vet friendly and has garnered national recognition. Some students participate in Veterans Upward Bound. Other veteran services at Tri-C include access to certification and degree programs for families, as well as other kinds of support.
“There’s a lot of money now for vets who want to go to school [through] the Post-9/11 GI Bill,” Miller noted. “You need to be creative; but there are funds, some of them in unlikely places.” Among the sources mentioned were the federal Yellow Ribbon GI Education Enhancement Program (Yellow Ribbon Program), which allows institutions to partner with the Veterans Administration to cover tuition, and Ohio’s Operation Purple, which provides summer camp opportunities to children of deployed service members free of charge.
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