Bruce Kelley:
The first is as institutions, there’s some things that we need to understand. And as I mentioned earlier, student veterans have already gone through a a very important educational experience. We need to be mindful of that. We need to understand that student veterans bring tremendous strengths with them into the classroom. It includes that maturity, we talked about it’s a can-do attitude, it’s that focus that, that desire to succeed educationally there’s a love of service that often serves them well in the classroom.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Hello, and welcome to Student Affairs Now. I’m your host, Dr. Glenn DeGuzman. In today’s episode, we are discussing student military veterans with our panel of experts, Dr. Phillip Morris, Dr. Bruce Kelly and Dr. Dani Molina and explore what we should know as student affairs professionals, campus, faculty, and administration to best support them in their collegiate endeavor. Student Affairs Now is the premier podcast in online learning community for the thousands of us who work in alongside and adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs. We release new episodes every week on Wednesdays. And you can find details about this episode or browse our archives at studentaffairsnow.com. Before we jump into the conversation, of course, we have to acknowledge and thank our sponsors. Today’s episode is sponsored by Stylus Publishing, visit styluspub.com and use promo code SANow for 30% off and free shipping. We also want to thank our other sponsors for today’s episode Anthology, learn more about their innovative data-driven platforms to build faster student engagement experience platforms learn more by visiting and anthology.com/engage.

Glenn DeGuzman:
As I mentioned, I’m your host, Glenn DeGuzman. I’m the associate Dean of students and director of residential life at the University of California Berkeley. I use the he series as my pronouns, and I’m hosting this conversation today from my home in Livermore, California, which is the ancestral home of the Aloni peoples. I’m very excited about this topic because full disclosure, I have family who are currently in the military and the past as well. And I just want to send a shout out to my cousin, Lieutenant Colonel Phillip, J Tadena with us Marines, who is going to be listening to this podcast. So let’s meet our panelists. And so let’s go ahead and get started. And this is a chance for them to introduce themselves a little bit more about their work that’s tied to this. And why don’t we go ahead and start with you, Phillip.

Phillip Morris:
Sure. Dr. DeGuzman, thank you for the introduction. Thank you for allowing me to join you for Student Affairs Now a big fan of the show and series. My name is Phillip. I’m a assistant professor at the university of Colorado, Colorado Springs. I’ve been working on this campus for about 10 years. I was came here and worked as a project director, but assumed the role also of the director of our veterans and military student affairs center on campus was very honored to serve in that role for about seven years. My background, I was in the military right out of high school from 1997 to 2005. I was in the army and army national guard had a chance to serve overseas for about two and a half years, including a one year deployment to Iraq with my unit. So glad to be here and glad that sort of chat with these folks find folks about our veterans on campus.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Glad to have you, Phillip let’s go to Dani a little bit more about ya.

Dani Molina:
Absolutely. yeah. Similarly, Dr. DeGuzman thank you so much for inviting us. I’m really excited to be here. Dani Molina, I’m the director for the veterans services center at University of California Irvine, and I’m also a us army veteran and a OIF bet. I was there for the initial invasion back in 2003, and a phenomenal time in the army was for me, so transformational and such a positive and uplifting experience. and as a result of my time in service, I benefited from a number of educational programs, chapter 30 chapter 31 chapter 33. And so I have some experience using VA benefits as an enlisted veteran. And I’ve done some some descriptive empirical research around this topic. my dissertation was based on a post 9/11 GI bill beneficiaries and you know, attempted to paint a picture of this population early on that work continued at the American council on education, where I was able fortunately to use a us department of education data through their NCE S suite of surveys and instruments just phenomenal data set that I was able to capitalize.

Dani Molina:
And again, continue the work of painting a picture of our post nine 11 era veterans and, and you know, seeing what we can find how they think about college how they approach higher education decision-making and the like and so yeah, just again, I’m really, really happy to be here and really excited about this podcast. Thank you for having me.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Looking Forward to hearing some of your thoughts and insights, Dani, and let’s go to Bruce.

Bruce Kelley:
It’s good to be with you all. And I look forward to our discussion today. I’m Bruce Kelley, I’m Dean of the college of fine arts at the University of South Dakota. That’s a recent appointment for me in my previous role. I was the assistant provost here at the University of South Dakota where I oversaw our center for teaching and learning the U S D testing center and our Gallagher center for experiential and education abroad. And it was in that role that I began to study how we can better serve our student veterans going back all the way to 2011. When I received a FIPSE grant with a couple of, of, of co-workers here or Arnetta Fox and Justin Smith, and to help really train our faculty to better understand and serve our student veterans. And so that’s, that’s a bit of, of where I come from. I’d like to give my father a shout out. He served in the army national guard for a number of years. Now, I have a number of other members of my immediate family that have served in the military. And I thank them. And you all for your service.

Glenn DeGuzman:
I think we think the model. Thank you. Let’s turn to Phillip. Let’s get you started and, and kick us off. Well, now, when I think about the relationship between military and higher education for me, I personally think about the GI bill, which should definitely, I think, had a huge role in giving veterans access to higher education, but I also recognize and acknowledge that my understanding of that relationship is limited and definitely has gaps. Can you provide sort of like a quick history lesson for me and others on our listeners on the relationship between higher ed and the military and how did it evolve?

Phillip Morris:
Sure. So you know, it really goes back to well, I think our modern history back to World War II, you know, after World War I our service men and women came back and they really weren’t supported, there was not a great effort legislatively to develop an education benefits program or an adjustment program housing program. So when, you know, we had the great depression and then world war two our congressional members and our national leadership really had a chance to, to kind of correct that. And so they propose the, the service members readjustment act in 1990 in 1944, I should say. It really provided access to higher education and home ownership for millions of veterans. So it really, a lot of folks credit the original GI bill with opening the door to the middle-class, you know, opening door to education of homeownership and just really giving you know, this opportunity for development for, for all these folks in the late forties.

Phillip Morris:
In fact you know, somewhere around 50% of all undergraduates were veterans we had an explosion of veterans coming back to education state colleges and universities were developing housing communities just for veterans. If you look back at some of those historic images, you’ll see, you know, large communities and, and temporary housing. That was because it was such a high number, you know, of, of folks that were coming back right now, we have about 4%, four to 6% of undergrads have a military connection. So it’s not, not a huge percentage. But when, you know, after World War II, it was a massive percentage of our students and, and, and really an influx of dollars, not just for our veterans, but our, our campuses really to, to develop, you know, programs. So there’ve been multiple iterations of the GI bill since then, the Montgomery GI bill was a result of, of the Vietnam war and trying to update and modernize the GI bill.

Phillip Morris:
That happened again in, in the early, in the two the two thousands, 2008 Senator Jim Webb proposed the post nine 11 GI bill. That was a huge moment for veterans in higher education because Montgomery GI bill just covered essentially it was a payment, essentially. It just a flat payment that came out. So veterans, veterans would then have to pay the institution for their tuition. Post nine 11 GI bill really provided a whole new model for funding and that the institutions now were getting direct payments from the VA to cover costs of tuition. And then a housing benefit is going, is now going out to our veterans and the recipients of the GI bill along with the book stipend. So huge update really was it was needed. The cost of higher education we know is, is gone up precipitously over the last three, four decades.

Phillip Morris:
So postman GMO was great. And, you know, that hit around 2009, 2010. We really saw veterans using that benefit. Most recently the forever GI bill with 2017 that’s just a slight modification to the post nine 11 GI bill that allows veterans the rest of their, essentially the rest of their lives. They use the GI bill there, there used to be a delimiting date, 15 years, and then you had to use it within 15 years, but but that changed in 2017. But the military really has long been interested in developing service members with education. So we still, we still have a tuition assistance program for active service members, women men and women. So that that’s a great benefit. I use that when I was, when I was serving you know, the, and, you know, I know that

Phillip Morris:
Dr. Molina worked for the American council of education for a little while, a little shout out to them, but, you know, for years they have been, you know, really supporting our military service men and women with education and translating those experiences to credits and to career progression and growth. So so there are these sort of legacy organizations out there that have been working on education, you know, for our, for our vets and our military members, but but it has modernized. And, and right now I think it’s working well, you know, I’ve seen, I started in 2012 working in this space and it, and it has, you know, the VA has adjusted campuses have adjusted. It’s been a really exciting thing to see the number of institutions that are at a higher, the, the correct staff that is really needed for the numbers of vets that are coming back and in the the amount of effort and time that takes to process these minutes bets correctly and support our veterans. So it is it’s been really encouraging for me and working in higher education to see that, but I’ll, I’ll stop there, but let Kelle and Dr. Molina add anything.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Thank you so much for that overview. And I definitely agree. I think that, and I didn’t really, I it’s helpful to hear that, you know, the evolution of of the organizations and the policies as long as, so, so as long as they’re keeping up to support the student veterans and the funding piece is definitely one aspect that needs to be addressed, but obviously there’s other transition issues before they even, right. And this I’m going to direct this question to you, Dr. Molina student veterans have unique, diverse challenges as they transition to college, like many, like many other college bound students adjusting just from living in a home to college, comes with other challenges, but for military veterans as well, different they’re transitioning to, to be a costume from a different set of challenges. Can you talk about these transition challenges, student veteran space when they come to campus, especially things student affairs professionals should know about.

Dani Molina:
Absolutely. I’d be happy to. But just briefly before I do Dr. Morris I just can’t stress enough how important the original World War II GI bill was. I mean, it had such a direct impact on almost everything we do in student affairs, right? The, the, the GI bill benefit works so well that the Pell grant was created, right. Department of education looked at the, at the VA’s educational portfolio, and they say, this is a wonderful of benefit. Why not create something for our non-military connected individuals? Right. So it resulted in the Pell grant. There was such an influx in housing, right. And that led to the creation of student housing that we now have, you know, most campuses. I mean, there’s so many direct benefits that resulted from the, you know, almost a 8 million half of these 16 million, a world war II, Vesta came back about half of them, right.

Dani Molina:
We know had some type of post-secondary education, whether it was a college degree or some other on the job training or something to that effect had such a foundational impact on higher education today. I just can’t stress enough. Dr. Morris did a fantastic job, just kind of outlining the, the direct effect that had on, on higher education in which we still do today, right? The forever GI bill and some of the modifications. I’m almost certainly sure that the department of education and other federal agencies are looking at that very closely and and maybe looking at the data and what we, what can we learn from such a, a great benefit that our, our post nine 11 veterans benefit from nowadays, of course, we’re always refining and fine tuning and all that good stuff. And and that’s continuing even to this day.

Dani Molina:
But again, for me, it was very impactful now. So, so to your question, right, what happens when, when they transitioned from active duty military, right into, into higher education you know, this was a question that we looked at very closely at the American council on education. And, and so, you know, I th the, the lens kind of that I took, you know, approaching the research that I’ve done was that we really need to take a step back because it, the military community is much more diverse than just kind of veterans, you know, and, and through my own personal experience, I’d show you a really good example. As a student veteran at UC Santa Cruz we are full-time student with my colleagues, some of them were in the national guard and reserve right to the reserve component. We will start, we will start the term.

Dani Molina:
And all of a sudden, you know, during that time they would get called up. They get called up to a training deployment. There was a high deployment temple at the time, right. OIF OEF was in full swing. And so they experience a lot of false starts, right. So in, in contrast to that I was a veteran, right. According to the way the VA defines a better, I no longer had obligations to serve in the military. So then I can focus, ideally full-time as student they couldn’t. And so I realized that, you know, Hey, look, we’re, we’re having, we’re building research and practices around this population. We really need to take a closer look at how diverse just this population is alone. And so some of that work that I started at at UCLA earning my, my PhD and that I was really able to engage in at the American council of education during my time there is we really wanted to kind of unpack this population.

Dani Molina:
And first, before we look at, you know, how do they experience and make decisions in college? And what we found was was pretty remarkable and it confirmed some of our hypotheses about just how military connected students experience college very differently. Right. So, so how do you define military connected students you know, nowadays it’s I think a lot of our folks are more familiar with that term military affiliated military connected. And so it’s just an umbrella term to kind of understand that this is a diverse population, right? We’re talking about veterans national guard, reservists active duty and, and a growing dependent population, right? So the dependents are these adult children and the spouses of veterans and service members. So, right. So that’s military connected. And you know, what we found was I’ll just, you know, one of the key takeaways was, you know, one third of national guard and about a third of reservists were in in college were women while only roughly a one in five or 22% were active duty or 21% were women.

Dani Molina:
So there’s some clear differences there half of active duty folks and reservists were racial, ethnic minorities, or multi-racial, we found that national guard members in college had higher incomes on average, relative to folks on active duty and reserve. Another takeaway was you know, the vast majority of those military connected students, they apply for receive financial aid very differently, very, very differently. So reservists were more likely 68% were more likely to receive VA or DOD benefits versus, you know, half of their national guard counterparts counterparts. Another key takeaway was a large share of those students face life circumstances that can inhibit their success in college, right, 60% among those active duty that were part of this dataset were, were identified as having four or more risk factors for not completing college. So risk factors, there’s research along risk factors that the department of education has looked at for many years.

Dani Molina:
And those risk factors can include being a, first-generation being a single parent being classified as an independent student and, and other risk factors. And so what we found was those on active duty were at higher risk of not completing college. And then veterans were you know, followed active duty and the like, so, so what I’m saying, I’m just trying to build a picture about this diverse population and that they all experience higher education, very, very differently. Now for veterans, they’re going to be much older than your traditional and, and different than even your non-traditional counterparts. And it’s that military service that’s going to set them apart even more from your non traditional counterparts is, you know, the there’s it’s just their background serving in the military. They understand their time in college is going to be short, especially if they were in the military for, you know, six, eight years.

Dani Molina:
Many of them make it a living and they retire. So they’re going to be much older. It could be maybe a little bit more rusty when it comes to you know, higher completing higher education. So they know the time is short. Now OIF, OEF veterans you know, and, and let me just briefly define what, I mean, my OIF OEF operation enduring freedom the campaign in Afghanistan, OIF operation Iraqi freedom, the campaign in Iraq and I believe both have to, you know, quote unquote some degree concluded by now. I think Afghanistan, that campaign oh, I O U F concluded in 2011. I want to say in Iraq shortly after. But my colleagues will correct me if I’m wrong. But I know that that’s, you know, pretty much concluded, but another thing that I want to mention is mental health, right.

Dani Molina:
And, and transitioning to college mental health. Now, I want, I want to be careful about mental health and military connected students because we want to be careful not to perpetuate damaging stereotypes of this population, right? So, so much of the sometimes can kind of be centered around mental health and veterans and post-traumatic stress combat stress, and like, and I do want to acknowledge that, that, that, that does exist. And there are military veterans, student veterans that can experience some very debilitating conditions. We always need to also showcase that there, you know, veterans are very successful in college, right. And, and so there has to be a balanced discussion with each within your own campus about what are the needs of your military connected students. They may or may not be mental health needs and maybe, you know, housing needs or other financial needs particularly for veterans that transitioned to foreign institutions if they exhausted their benefits.

Dani Molina:
So I bring that up because you know, I’m always careful myself that I, you know, we, we don’t perpetuate those discussions because as a student veteran I, I would interact with some of my colleagues that were veterans, and sometimes when we would get invited to these studies or to these, you know when such a large focus and part of the culture at, at a campus would be around mental health, it would be a turnoff for some student veterans. So just being mindful of that some of the other transitional challenges can be around exhausting, finite GI bill dollars, right? The, the GI bill any job really, that’s not you know infinite benefit, right. At some point that may run out. And what, what I’ve seen throughout the years as an administrator is working at four year institutions is sometimes when they w when veterans make the jump to four year institutions they may have exhausted their benefits, or they may not have enough entitlement to carry them out through a four-year degree or graduate education.

Dani Molina:
Right. So you know, being mindful that if there’s any scholarship resources or any grant aid, financial aid title, four funding that you know, veterans may be eligible for, you probably want to encourage them to apply because you don’t want to get into a situation where, you know, you’re, you’re advising a veteran and you think like, oh, you know, you’ve got your GI bill dollars, you should be fine. And that’s not always the case. And to kind of add another layer to that. Sometimes a veteran may have a family, right? They may have a mortgage or other financial commitments and responsibilities that where they can benefit from financial aid. And so those are kind of some of the big transitional challenges that I would say another one, and I’ll conclude with this is housing, right? So some type of a housing to accommodate and be flexible to their situations.

Dani Molina:
They may arrive to your campus outside of your locality, outside of your region. It could be a cross country transition. And so they don’t, you know, you want to have a place where they can land and their probability to succeed as much higher. We know from research that if a student, you know, not just a veteran, but any student, if they live on campus, their probability of a college completion and retention is going to go up, right. It’s going to be a much higher probability because of the, you know, you’re, you’re close to campus resources and you’re your networks of support. So if it, you know, I’m a very happy to share that here at UC Irvine and most campuses that I’ve been in, we have guaranteed housing and, you know, back in the day we were among the first you know, one of our highlights, but nowadays I think most campuses should have some type of housing policies so that student veterans can live on campus and be close to those resources and be more likely to succeed.

Dani Molina:
Just be mindful, you know, veterans, again, as I’m painting that picture, they’re going to be much older. So, you know, think about the dorming versus the graduate and family housing, I think is going to be more aligned with what they want to do maybe in college and how you know, how they want to quickly kind of, you know, experience college life and then, you know, move on to the labor market or graduate school. And so I’ll end there and hopefully it’s enough to kind of digest on and consider.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Oh, I think you hit a lot of really good points as Dr. Molina. I keep thinking, I appreciate you actually shedding a spotlight or putting a spotlight on even the diversity within the military connected students. And then I also, you know, I’m a housing person. And so just understanding that those implicates around housing, financial aid, I think that that definitely is a reality for many folks and, and actually something that I didn’t even think about. I mean, we think about it, but I’m glad you raised it. It’s around mental health and just being careful about making those assumptions. So obviously these are a lot of the transition challenges coming in, but, but coming to campus, but the university, and once you arrive, there’s new challenges that await. so this question is for you, Dr. Kelley you know, for me, in preparation and preparation for this conversation, I became aware of some statistics that indicated that, you know, once students, veterans arrive on campus, half of them don’t feel connected on campus. And then another third feel judged for their affiliation with the military. Why is this?

Bruce Kelley:
Well, that’s a great question. And I’m just going to say thank you to both Dr. Morris and Dr. Molina, because a lot of what I’m going to say is going to bounce right off of what they did. And I appreciate so much, you know, in a podcast like this, we’re going to talk about some generalities, but it’s, again, it is really important to note that our our student veterans or military affiliated students are individuals. And one of the things that I learned as a person who has not been in the military as I got to know, our student veteran population is how incredibly diverse that population is. And so it’s important for universities and colleges to understand that I will also say that depending on your location you will also often have a a predominant type of military affiliated students.

Bruce Kelley:
You know, if you’re located next to a base, you may have students that are affiliated with the branch of service, you know, that is at that base, that base. I know we know from our research here in South Dakota, that a lot of our students are, are affiliated with one of the guard units, national army national guard or air national guard. And, and, and those differences matter to the experience of someone that’s in the national guard. It’s different from someone who’s in the reserves is different from someone’s who’s on active duty. And so there’s a lot of understanding that needs to happen is as we look to try to serve our student veterans and our military affiliated students. So to get to your question and again, I’m just going to bounce off some of the things that Dr.

Bruce Kelley:
Molina said, one of the things that we have really tried to focus on is we have trained our faculty and staff is, is that members of the military are coming to us already. Having had a formidable educational experience. It’s not like higher education is the first thing, you know, the first time that they’ve been asked to learn the military does a really effective job of training and teaching its members. And so that’s one of the things that faculty and staff need to understand in addition the there’s there’s differences in how military training occurs and how learning happens in the educational systems in higher education typically. And again, there’s going to be some generalities here, but if you’re talking about student veterans, not feeling quite connected you know, one of the easiest ways to think about this is to think about the difference between a typical classroom environment and a military briefing, and if you’ve never experienced a military briefing then one of the things that we did is working with our student veterans center, we asked our student veterans to do faculty training and run it as if it were a military briefing.

Bruce Kelley:
And boy did that open up faculty eyes. They, all of a sudden it’s like, oh, okay, I get what the, what the differences are. That was a fantastic opportunity. And by the way, I will say one of the most effective things that we did throughout our work with, with faculty was to involve our student veteran population, just bring them into the conversation, bring them into the training. There are people with a ton of experience and they were more than happy to CA oh, they were more than happy to run our faculty through a military style briefing. They enjoyed that. So, you know, they’re, it’s important to know that the differences the training that our, our military students receive has installed them, instilled in them a sense of identity, a sense of purpose purposefulness, and a sense of pride.

Bruce Kelley:
And in higher education, we don’t always do a great job of that. And so there’s a difference there. And again that contributes to that lack of connectedness. And then also students in the military are taught to be goal oriented with a respect for discipline, and that can be at odds with your typical you know, 18 year old first-year student who is perhaps not as, as respectful of discipline and, and you know, kind of classroom decorum, those types of things. And so one of the things that we talked about in the book that we wrote was this idea of cultural incongruities that that student veterans must kind of work through. And and so that includes this idea of military is very hierarchical. Education is not always hierarchical. It’s not always easy to determine, well, who should I see for this problem in the military?

Bruce Kelley:
That’s generally spelled out pretty well. If I have this type of problem, I go see this type of person in higher education. It’s not always the case. I think we’re getting better at that in part, because we’re trying to serve our student veterans. And as with most things, in terms of universal design, you help one student population and it, and it ends up helping a lot of different types of student populations. As Dr. Molina mentioned there our student veterans are often a different age than than their cohort. And so they’re matured in some ways that are not reflective of our more traditionally aged students. In addition, they’ve often had significant life experiences, including firsthand international and cross-cultural experiences that our other students just don’t understand and don’t get again they may be married, may have children,

Bruce Kelley:
Dr. Molina mentioned that, but what that means is that some of these, you know, inclusion types of activities that we run for student affairs that are geared towards the again, we love our traditionally aged students and, and, and we want to serve them, but some of those types of activities just don’t sound like fun or don’t sound like something that I want to participate in. If I’m a student veteran five, six years older than everybody else. And, and with just a different type of, of life experiences. So those all contribute to the feeling of kind of not being connected. I’ll also mention, again bouncing off of what Dr. Molina said our women veterans often experience that discontinuity in that are different than our male veterans. And I think that it’s important for us to understand that to a better extent than we do.

Bruce Kelley:
And then in terms of feeling judged you know, I, I hope that this is getting better. I hope that we are not harboring the same type of stereotypes about the military that we did 20 or 30 years ago, but I know that we do have faculty that that sometimes harbor those, those stereotypes it may be just because they’re not familiar with military systems. You know, a lot of times it’s, it’s not you know, active, but it’s, it’s kind of this unintentional passive type of setting up the type of atmosphere that makes our student veterans feel judged in the same way because they feel disconnected from their peers. They may also feel judged by their peers. And so that’s one of the things that we have to work on.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Thank you for that, overview your your example about the military briefing versus the classroom. That’s phenomenal. It made me think about an experience when I used to teach a leadership class at my current institution, UC Berkeley, and and a big part of that class was trying to bring in diverse perspectives from student leaders. And I’m a very intentional in having military connected students on that. And, and, and when we do engage in these types of leadership activities, they can be very conceptual, very holistic, and sometimes not very direct. And one of the, the, the pieces that we did in the, in a leadership program was to and speaking with the students identified as soon veterans, right? We had them bring in some of their examples tie into some of them are conceptual pieces of direct input. And I found that got really connected to the curriculum better knowing that they felt like they can contribute to the conversation. It is a very different style. And I do appreciate you bringing that up. Dani, I want to return back to you. So, so you know, we think about some of the direct services and, you know, obviously you are in the, in the student veterans office. So can you tell me more about some of the best practices for our student veterans office?

Dani Molina:
Yeah, absolutely. So some of the best practices, right. We were very fortunate that here in the Southern California region we are able to work with Dr. Marshall Thomas. And so Dr. Thomas has, what’s called a net ally seminar. And typically it’s about a four hour seminar. I believe now there, obviously the pandemic probably a virtual seminar but the in-person one was phenomenal. I’ve experienced it a few times. That’s always a, one of the recommendations that I have in terms of like, what are some good practices to inform faculty and staff on how to engage and not, and not engage with with veterans and other military connects. So just cause there’s some language you, you can use that’s okay. Other languages not so, okay. Right. and so he, he gives a deep dive into the background of being in the military and rank and structure, and what are some of the experiences that folks go through in the military and then kind of walks folks through what they may experience in higher education and, and what we can do to help them.

Dani Molina:
So I always recommend VetNet ally to Dr. Marshall Thomas he’s now was at Cal state long beach as director of the vet center. And now he’s in the chancellor’s office. And so feel free to reach out to him. Psych Armor is another wonderful resource. We actually have it on our website. They have a number of courses for higher ed, higher education professionals you know, 15, 15 things. Veterans want you to know academic accommodations. They have advising military students in higher education just a whole number of other courses. And some of those instructors are phenomenal. I’ve worked with some of those instructors in the past, and they’re just they’re veterans themselves. They’re just really technical experts in the area.

Dani Molina:
So highly recommend psych armor. And then some of the literature, right, a call to serve, I think, is a staple you know, a handbook on student veterans of higher education believe Corey Roman was one of the lead authors there. And Corey was, I believe is still at university of Nebraska Lincoln from the last last time I spoke with him and to it’s a great book. And it talks about some of the issues we’re talking about obviously in much more detail, the ACE toolkit for veteran friendly institutions. So the ACE tool kit, which I helped manage when I was at ACE at the American council on education was really kind of depository of really good practices that any institution can share. Right? So you create an account, you, you uploaded your, like orient your summer orientation for your campus, so that hundreds and hundreds of other campuses across the us can look at and use as a template, maybe contacted to get more information, anything about housing, anything you had related to serving military connected students, this toolkit now that it’s retired basically took all of that knowledge and synthesize all that, and it’s free.

Dani Molina:
You, you can Google ACA toolkit for veteran friendly institutions, and you have that summary at your disposal. It’s really good information there that I recommend for folks to take a look at and consider implementing at your campus. And then obviously some of the work that I did at the American council of education, the military connected undergraduate study, I think it has some really, really good takeaways. And, and again painted a picture of what our population experiences in higher education and how to, how to really better understand, again, how our reserve is when you’re engaging with somebody in the reserve component, how you may want to advise them versus somebody who’s on active duty, who’s, you know, active full-time service member that they’re probably on TA like Dr. Morris mentioned, right. Tuition assistance. And they are probably going to be only there for a finite time while they either go on training or you know, PCs elsewhere.

Dani Molina:
And then lastly, I’ll say if you have a veterans center veterans office, you know, I would engage with the staff there, right. They’re going to be able to you know, walk you through their population because, you know, campuses are all, they’re all different, right? Walk you through their population and, you know, talk to you about like, Hey, here’s some of the, here’s how we can work together in student life. Here’s what we can you know, do to better understand and support our military units for each campus. Right. So, good example with Dr. Morris University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, you have four courses like right down the street. So, you know, I would imagine you’re going to have a lot of folks on active duty and even the dependents, right. Who are, who are benefiting from chapter 33, and we really don’t have any military installation close to use here. Right. So we don’t, you know, obviously our, our population will probably look different than, than his campus, but yeah. So those are some of the recommendations that I offer in terms of engaging with the vet’s office and student affairs.

Phillip Morris:
Yeah. No, if I’m, if I might just jump on there, ultimately we we’ve had success. So I, I like to tell a story, like a development story on our campus because we I mentioned 2010, that’s when the post 9/11 veterans showed up, we had to, all the campuses had to adjust to this whole new veteran benefit process and a whole lot more veterans coming back. So we started with a, you know, a small staff, a small office. We one of the things that I did when I was, when I started the position we immediately connected with our university advancement and thinking about how do we support beyond just our traditional funding sources new staff lines, new positioning positions, new initiatives you know, supporting student scholarships, you know, all, all of the growth and development.

Phillip Morris:
So we started small with USAA, a grant. We got Jason, we worked with JP Morgan, chase worked with our the Anschutz foundation here in Colorado. And, and and so and I saw this across the, across the country, you see, across the country, family foundations, major corporate donations and, and you know, philanthropy arms that want to support veterans. I, I always liked the mission that, that one as well, because, you know, there, there has been a wave. There has been a you know, an opportunities out there for folks that want to support veterans. And this on campuses have found a fantastic place, you know, for a family foundation or a corporate foundation to do that. So, so that’s another, that’s another one that I think has been successful for campuses. And I always suggest any new student first professional working with veterans, you know, think about that, think about how can we partner, you know, partnering with the local coffee shop to offer coffee for the veterans on campus.

Phillip Morris:
You know those are all things that we, you know, kind of worked through. The first year is so important. So you know Dr. Molina, you worked at the university of UCLA higher ed Institute, the Institute for higher education, you know, they have their first year a survey, right. That’s a huge initiative. They run that for probably 50 years thinking about what, what does that, what does those really important things for all first-year students, you know, in their first semester and in that retention survey? So the same thing I think is true for adult continuing students that are coming back and have been away from school for a long time. You know, so I think about orientation making sure that we bring them in and give them a warm welcome, make sure they know where, you know, where to go for certain services and help and, and connecting things like the wellness center to, to the veterans center.

Phillip Morris:
We did abroad initiative on campus to connect wellness points across campus. So we eliminated any fees for individual group therapy for veterans. We are, we had grant funding to knock that out. We take our first year seminar for veterans to the wellness center, and we introduced them to all the services and the counselors and thinking about mindfulness and sleep health and all these different sort of aspects of wellness that we, we make sure that they understand, you know, how to be well as students and how to really integrate on campus. So that first year is really important. That’s one thing that I would say any new student affairs professionals going to work with veterans, you know, think about making that connection, even as they’re transitioning out before they’re even your student, like, what are the services, what are the things that we can do for you on this campus to help you reach your goals essentially? So, so that I would, I would add that one as well.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Thank you, Dr. Morris and Dr. Molina for just that overview and providing some of the best practices and resources and suggestions as well. I want to go back to something Dr. Kelley, you said earlier, you, you, you throw some love to some of your your colleagues. I know along with Justin Smith and Arnetta Fox in 2013 you wrote a book preparing campus for veterans success. So fast, 2021 what what’s still relevant, what are critical and essential actions, campus leaders, and administrators must do to support veterans in order for them to be successful.

Bruce Kelley:
No, thank you for that. Yeah. And, and we, we chose that title for two reasons. The first is the way that you took it, but the second one is preparing your, your campus for veterans success, because they’re going to succeed as a whole. So your campus better prepare, be prepared for it. I mean, you know and so we’ve already heard a lot of great ideas that are still relevant today. The first is as institutions, there’s some things that we need to understand. And as I mentioned earlier, student veterans have already gone through a a very important educational experience. We need to be mindful of that. We need to understand that student veterans bring tremendous strengths with them into the classroom. It includes that maturity, we talked about it’s a can-do attitude, it’s that focus that, that desire to succeed educationally there’s a love of service that often serves them well in the classroom.

Bruce Kelley:
And again, these, these, these experiences that they’ve had, they’ve had life experiences that other students don’t have that they can use to inform their learning. And so it’s important for institutions to understand the strengths that a student veterans come come with. And then as we’re hearing institutions should find ways to get feedback from their student veterans. You know, at some, in some ways you need either have focus groups or you need to have a dedicated staff member that is, that’s reaching out to the student veterans, what do your student veterans say about your institution so that you can begin to really address the challenges that need to be addressed. And, and sometimes are challenges on our end, not their end and we need to be the ones that are moving. And so to that end, I think it’s really important to have faculty and staff training programs, help them understand what the military is, who our military students are, help them to understand the diversity of it, help them to understand what our student veterans are bringing with them.

Bruce Kelley:
All of these things are, are truly important in terms of physical and personnel resources, it’s, it really is best. If you can have a dedicated space that veterans can call their own staffed by folks who have been in the military or who deeply understand the military. And I just think that that’s really important. That was one of the outcomes from our own research. We were able to create a student veterans resource center here on campus, and it has made a huge difference for our student veterans. As noted admissions office should have someone who fully understands the military as educational processes should know benefits inside and out who understands end of deployment cycles impact national guard reserve, regular military. You know, you really need to have someone in, in admissions and financial aid that are, that are clued in to, to the challenges that student veterans face in that end.

Bruce Kelley:
Also veterans resources should be easily accessible and readily found on the institution’s website. You shouldn’t have to dive, you know, 20 links in to, to find out you know, who is my veteran service officer and how do I figure out who to talk to, to get my benefits. And then lastly, I’ll just say, in terms of processes, institutions need to make sure that administrative processes are clearly explained, and that students are clearly told who to see and what to do. Now, this is true for all of our students, but again, in the military, there’s often literal checklists, okay. When I, what do I need to do to do this? You do this check, you do this, check, you do this check in higher ed. We haven’t always been good about that. And so to the extent that we can, we need to develop that type of very, just specific explanations for how to get things done.

Bruce Kelley:
How do I drop a class? How do I access my benefits? How do I use the electronic bookstore? How don’t, you know, all of these things we need, the students need to know how their, their military credit is going to transfer in. You know, ACE has done a really great job of trying to help institutions figure that out as, as has been mentioned, but you need to have someone at your institution that knows and, and can help student veterans better understand how are those credits going to transfer in. And then finally as an institution you need to have clearly identified and well-thought out policies that take student veterans into account. So for example, can veterans be exempt from mandatory first-year housing rules, you know, that’s really important. Do absence policies address address, for example, national guard, training dates or VA appointments, things like that. So universities just need to look at their processes and say, okay, are we accommodating our student veterans needs as we’re developing,

Glenn DeGuzman:
Thank you, Dr. Kelly, one of the cool things about Student Affairs Now, just even in this call, I’ve heard so many wonderful resources that y’all mentioned. Obviously Dr. Kelley, your book, Dr. Molina, you mentioned, called to serve the organization ACE. We’re going to put this on our website. So I know for the listeners out there just code a student affairs now.com, you can check out the resources and that I think I definitely want to actually want to learn more about psych psych armor as well. Is that, that’s just really interesting to hear about that. I’ve never heard of that before. Let me turn back to Dr. Morris, you know, I think this is a question that was posed to me by someone in my institution over the years. There has been tension between colleges and universities in the presence of military recruiters on campus. And speaking to my colleagues, speaking to student veterans this does impact them, why the tension and what type of awareness would you want the next generation, the current generation, the next generation of student affairs professionals to have?

Phillip Morris:
Sure, sure. So so I would say that first, I’ll just really quickly, I wanna just follow up on Dr. Kelley and Dr. Molina’s conversation about training for faculty and staff. They work. So I, we implemented a program at 2013 and probably in 2015, I think we started collecting data on this. And I, along with some colleagues did a formal study on the, on the efficacy of our military vet ally training. And we, we learned that the statistically significant results over time in terms of growth on a set of competencies. We have qualitative feedback from from faculty staff who took the training months, you know, months after the training. It provided about things they’ve done in the classroom to change. And that, so that research is, is being published. It’s just about to be published in the journal of continuing higher education.

Phillip Morris:
So that is and we also talk about the challenges just for all the student affairs folks out there, interested in efficacy and assessment. You know, how do you, how do you evaluate a training session? So it’s a two hour session, four hour session. What are the ways that we can look at long-term impacts and changes on campus? So things like ceiling effect for a quiz, that’s one thing we ran into because, you know, you, if you take a quiz that’s a required training online, and you have to get score 80% or higher you can retake it. So it doesn’t really, so in that sense, it’s a really capturing the knowledge and competency that they gained, if they’re allowed to retake it. So things like that we covered in that article as well. So a little plug on that.

Phillip Morris:
So, but your, your question Dr. Guzman was about you know, this, this conflict between military recruiters and you know, maybe the, you know, military ROTC can take components on campus in the general population. I think in the, you know, given the nature of the post side of the wars, the global war on terror it has been really relegated to a very small proportion of our population. One, one to 2% of adult Americans have served in the military post 9/11. So you really have I think probably lessening of that sort of tension that can happen with recruiters in the protest culture and the activist culture around war. You know, we, we don’t see that much. I, you know, I’ve been working here, it’s a very military community, Colorado Springs. We just don’t really have much of an activist war culture here, but I don’t think that’s uncommon.

Phillip Morris:
And I think maybe certainly at Berkeley, it may be a little different, you know, and certainly Dr. DeGuzman, it’s different culture there by, by far. But I think it’s really interesting to think about you know, this sort of the divide or, or disparity between those and those who have it, you know, in, in all of our trainings on campus. And I’m sure Dr. Molina, you’ve seen this though, Kelly, you know, this term, thank you for your service, right? Thank you for your service. It comes up a lot and we do these, these training sessions and talking with you, having our FAC or student veteran panel talking to our, our faculty staff it’s kind of symbolizes like this divide in this sort of, we don’t have to serve, so we appreciate your service. So we say thank you for your service, which isn’t inherently a bad thing.

Phillip Morris:
It’s, it’s a, it’s an expression of gratitude. But I think for, for veterans and, you know, career military members that have deployed multiple times, you know, it sometimes can feel empty. You can feel like, you know, not a, not a legitimate or genuine engagement. And so I think you know, back to, to the question about this, this tension on campus between like recruiters and things you know, I think the only time I’ve seen that is on our campus, at least has been other veterans like student vets that are, that are activists. And we do have that and they are, they are you know, really adamant about, you know, correcting some of the things that they saw wrong with the policy, the foreign policy around the invasion of Iraq and things like that. So so that’s the only time that’s really happened on our campus, but, but it the question really made me think about, you know, that divide and that, that sort of tension there around those who serve and those who don’t.

Phillip Morris:
And how do we, how do we share that experience with with our faculty and staff and our just community in general? I have a, I’m just going to give a plug for this book. It’s called a grateful nation. I don’t think my it’s student veterans and rise in the military friendly campus by Eleanor. I don’t know if you guys, anyone else here has read that, but she digs really deep. It’s a really great on the student veteran experience, but she really digs really deep into that, that concept of, you know, how, how our student veterans perceive and in their do they perceive like a genuine, like appreciation or is it very surface level in that way? So but I’ll stop. I’ll stop with that.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Thank you for that. And we’ll definitely put that book onto the resource page for people to check out. We are at our final questions where we’re running out of time. And so this podcast is called Student Affair Now. And so I want you to think about some of the things, maybe we didn’t cover what we covered today. So federal policy access to education, funding, support services, or something, even your one of you mentioned, and you just heard on this, on this conversation. And if each of you could take a minute or two to summarize, what are you pondering? What are you questioning? What’s still troubling you now? And I’m gonna have I’m gonna have, I believe in the order it’s Dani you’re up first. So Dr. Molina first.

Dani Molina:
Yeah. You know, it was I think I was really intrigued by the, the pre discussion right around what’s next for the armed forces. Obviously everybody’s got to get out of the military at some point, so they’ll gain that veteran status. Right. What’s next with you know, cyber warfare I think is is you know, the, the big talk right now, right. How, how will they impact the active duty folks now think is going to be more directly and more immediate, but you know, mid to longterm our veterans, right? How are they going to be impacted? Right. And, and so particularly for if they go into higher education, right. So I think campuses and those experts, right? The technical experts and, and scholars around this area of cyber terrorism and cyber warfare, you know, how do you capitalize and maybe even work with the basic and applied defense research, right?

Dani Molina:
How does that, you know, how’s that going to work out you know, world war two after world war two office of Naval research and a number of other defense units worked very closely with higher education to combat everything that needed to be addressed in that time. And so, and, and, and a number of really good developments came from that partnership, that work. Right. So, so you know, that is always encouraged, right? When, when that especially as, as emerging or continuing issues coming up. And so veterans, you know, I, I think they’re very set up very nicely to to support those type of efforts right. In the, you know, being in the military, they kind of understand how to navigate large institutions and bureaucracies and how to, and, and, you know, to kind of couple that they are always so proud of their service.

Dani Molina:
Right. And, and most of the time when you ask a veteran, if they would do it again, even if they had a bad experience, they will tell you absolutely. They would do it again. And I think there there’s something, there there’s something about people that serve in the military and they’re so tied to the the spirit of the country and the success of our nation. And I feel like, you know, when people get out that some of them may be looking to continue that, right. That contribution. So so I wanted that there, but I think there’s something to look at both from institutional perspective, partnering with defense, but then also for our veterans, so that they, there may be opportunities in higher education to you know, contribute to to that partnership.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Thank you, Dr. Molina, Dr. Kelley, what’s on your mind.

Dani Molina:
Well, I, I’m also gonna to bounce back to some of our discussion before we started our official podcast. And that is, we were having a little bit of a conversation about the creation of the space force. And so just very quickly, what I’ll say is the military is going to continue to change as Dr. Molina was saying about cybersecurity, the military is going to continue to change as it does. Higher education must also continue to change so that we can continue to serve our student veterans.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Thank you. And Dr. Morris, close us out.

Phillip Morris:
Sure. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much. You know, one of the things that I was thinking about along with Dr. Molina and Dr. Kelly about the sort of our modern defense mechanisms and how that will change our, our, the military experience and you know, the, the military is diversifying tremendously. So I think I read between 2010 and 2017. There was like a 20% growth in individuals of color serving in the military. So we have a very diverse as we mentioned, we mentioned this to be time it’s an extremely diverse group. There’s, there’s an opportunity now for folks with that are transgendered or, you know, different identities to serve. And you know, that, that has been a change, you know since don’t ask, don’t tell there have been some significant changes in the military to be more inclusive and accepting.

Phillip Morris:
And, and so that’s encouraging to me, and I think that, you know, we, we met, we’re going to see more diverse identities that come in as student veterans. They’re not all going to look like me. You know, my demographic is probably the most, most dominant, but that’s not going to be the case forever. So so that’s encouraging. And and I would say you know, I’m also wondering about, you know, the pandemic has changed all of, all of us in thinking about distance education and hybrid education and how the VA will continue to support, you know, student veterans that are living, you know, in Colorado that want to study in California for that, for example. So I, I, you know, I wonder about those things as well, in terms of distance education. But, you know, while curving the influence of the for-profit sector, which I won’t go further into that in this for a different podcast, but but I’ll, I’ll leave it at that. So, so thank you for the opportunity.

Glenn DeGuzman:
And I want to thank this entire panel. I want to thank Dr. Dani Molina, Dr. Phillip Morris and Dr. Bruce Kelley for being my guests today. Dr. Morris special shout out to you for outreaching to supervisors. Now, I know you’re a listener. So when the topic, this was something that our team definitely wanted to do. And so thank you so much for doing that. It’s a reminder to our audience. If you have a great topic, bring it to our attention. I want to thank Nat Ambrosey who does all the behind the scenes work to get these episodes prepared, transcribing aired. Thank you. And I need to definitely do the full shout out to our sponsors. Stylus is proud to be a sponsor for Student Affairs Now podcast browse their student affairs, diversity professional titles at styluspub.com. Use promo code SANow for 30% off our books, plus free shipping, you can find stylists on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter @styluspub.

Glenn DeGuzman:
This episode is all sponsored by Anthology. Transform your student experience and advanced co-curricular learning with Anthology engage. With this technology platform, you’re able to easily manage your student organization, efficiently plan events, and truly understand student involvement to continuously improve your engagement efforts at your institution. Learn more by going and visiting anthology.com/engage to our audience and listeners. Thanks for joining us. If you’re listening today and you are not already receiving our weekly newsletter, please visit our website at studentaffairsnow.com and scroll to the bottom of the homepage to add your email to our MailChimp list while you’re there, definitely check out our archives. We are continuing to grow, and again, we’ve surpassed. Unbelievable. The number of downloads for our show has been just truly amazing. It tells us that you are listening and you are definitely outreaching to us. I’m going to Guzman. Thanks for spending time with us today and listening or watching hope you enjoyed this episode, wherever you are, go out and make it a good day. Take care.

Websites: 

PsychArmor

Books: 

Kelley, B. C., Smith, J. M., & Fox, E. L. (2013). Preparing your campus for veterans’ success : an integrated approach to facilitating the transition and persistence of our military students. Stylus Pub.

Monetti, T., & Monetti, P. (2011). Called to serve : encouragement, support, and inspiration for military families. Discovery House Publishers.

Moore, E., (2017) Grateful Nation: Student Veterans and the Rise of the Military-Friendly Campus. Duke University Press https://www.dukeupress.edu/grateful-nation

Videos: 

PsychArmor Training: 15 Things Veterans Want You to Know

This is the cornerstone course for PsychArmor and was created to educate anyone who works with, lives with, or cares for our military Veterans. PsychArmor asked hundreds of Veterans what they wanted civilians, employers, educators, health care providers, and therapists to know about them. These comments were used to create the topics of this course including 5 Questions You Should Always Ask Veterans, 1 Question You Should Never Ask Veterans, and 15 Facts that promote greater understanding of our Veterans.

(note – creating a free login is required to enroll and watch full video)

Article/Book citations: 

ACE Toolkit for Veteran Friendly Institutions