Combat to college p1 - College Campus Life for Veterans - Military Times EDGE

Like many college freshmen, John Fett sometimes has trouble making coursework and class attendance a priority. But while his classmates at Sierra College in Rocklin, Calif., may have overactive social calendars to blame for their academic disinterest, the 29-year-old former Marine corporal said his two combat tours in Iraq have had more to do with his struggle to become a serious student.

“Things are not life and death here,” said Fett, who spent several months in a Veterans Affairs Department hospital being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder related to his combat service. “You have to tell yourself, ‘It is important to go to class today.’ Just because nobody is going to die for your decisions, it’s not that it’s not important.”

Fett’s situation is not unique.

A study released in April 2008 by the think tank Rand Corp. estimates that 300,000 U.S. troops suffer major depression or PTSD resulting from service in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another 320,000 received possible traumatic brain injury, the study found. And while figures do not exist for the number of veterans with PTSD or TBI attending U.S. colleges and universities, VA paid $2.96 billion in education benefits to more than 520,000 students in fiscal 2007. An improved GI Bill scheduled to take effect in August is expected to further increase the ranks of veterans pursuing higher education.

In response, a growing number of colleges nationwide are taking steps to make the transition from combat to the classroom an easier one. Behind this new movement are both student-veterans themselves, looking to ease their own stressors related to academic life and to pave the way for others, and myriad college and university faculty and staff — some with military experience, others with none — who are stepping up to fill a void in support of student veterans at their schools.

Personal support

A former Marine, Catherine Morris, veterans counselor at Sierra College, has helped veterans at her school since 2001. A faculty member and employee of the university — not the VA — her job is to offer personalized assistance to some 400 Sierra student veterans through every step of college life.

Morris counsels students on their GI Bill benefits, helps them select classes and discusses intended career paths. Trained to work with veterans suffering from PTSD and TBI, she performs a needs assessment on student veterans to see how they served in combat and whether they have been evaluated for combat-related mental and physical injuries. Morris also teaches a three-credit college success class called Boots to Books.

“A lot of vets are lost coming into a college environment because it seems like everyone is out for themselves,” Morris said. The goal of the course is to get veterans connected with one another, building upon the camaraderie they experienced in the military while also helping re-integrate them into society.

Specialized English and physical education courses for veterans also are offered at Sierra.

Just for vets

At Cleveland State University in Ohio, veterans receive similar support through the Supportive Education for the Returning Veteran, or SERV, program. Started by program director John Schupp in spring 2008, SERV also is designed to ease veterans’ transitions from service members to civilians to students. And, as with Morris’ approach at Sierra College, Schupp’s services are all about a personal approach. He meets every student veteran and gives each a walk-through of the campus.

Under the SERV program, student veterans start out taking “vets-only” classes and, over the course of several semesters, gradually transition into regular civilian courses. According to Schupp, this slow transition is imperative to the overall success of the veterans’ academic experience.

At Montgomery College in Rockville, Md., program coordinator Rose Sachs describes the school’s Combat2College as more of a philosophy than a program.

“The program is about saying, ‘Thank you, welcome back,’ and, essentially, to assist students in adapting the skill set that is developed in military training and combat experience to facilitate a successful college experience,” Sachs said.

“The idea is not to isolate people, but to integrate people.”

Started in summer 2008, C2C offers services for student veterans such as mentoring, academic advising and a one-credit, first-year seminar focusing on campus resources, educational planning and how to apply military skills in the classroom.

Former Marine Cpl. Eric Beauchamp, 24, an engineering student at Montgomery College, had high praise for C2C. Beauchamp, who helped found a veterans club at the school around the same time C2C started, is excited about the possibilities both his club and the group stand to offer vets.

“It’s very encouraging, because it’s a separate entity to the club. They’re not controlling what we do, but at the same time, we can help each other,” Beauchamp said.

Work to be done

Morris, Schupp and Sachs frequently speak at other schools interested in starting similar programs. All three emphasize the need for increased numbers of such programs to assist student veterans on college and university campuses across the nation. And all point to the work yet to be done, even on campuses where such programs already exist, in terms of educating faculty and staff on how to provide the best possible education and opportunities to student veterans.

But for students like Fett who attend schools where programs already are in place, the care and assistance ease innumerable burdens in the transition from combat to college life.

“[Catherine Morris] made life so easy for me,” Fett said. “She cut a lot of red tape and walked me through the process.

“It’s really hard for me to try to organize my life sometimes,” he continued, adding that he recently took a semester off to focus on a new sales job he’s landed. “There is too much stuff going on, and I don’t deal with it as well as I used to. She helps me a lot.”