Your Campus Connection
Veterans centers offer more than just a meeting place.
By Andrea Downing Peck

The number of veterans on college campuses is surging as the Post-9/11 GI Bill offers more than 2 million service members an opportunity to pursue higher education and the recession makes landing a civilian job difficult.

For many veterans, however, successfully transitioning from the battlefield to academic life involves more than adjusting to classroom rigors. It requires finding a place on campus to call “home.”

On campuses nationwide, veteran centers are providing ex-service members with that sense of place. When City College of San Francisco  (CCSF) opened its Veterans Resource Center last fall, it drew accolades from the student veteran community.

CCSF student Jordan Towers, a former Marine who served on the Veterans Task Force that helped design the new facility, credits Chancellor Don Griffin for reaching out to veterans and recognizing the need to move the Veterans Office to a prominent location.

“Since the Vietnam War, vets had been in the basement,” said Towers, describing the former location of the Veterans Office. “The chancellor put us on the third floor of a nice building with a nice view. He put us right down the hall from other services – the financial aid office is a few feet away. We didn’t just build a veterans center. We built a veterans services area.”

Located on the third floor of the campus’s main academic building, the Veterans Resource Center now includes a study area and lounge, as well as offices offering an array of services from Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) benefit certification and academic advising to mental health counseling.

“We don’t want veterans spending half a day traveling to the VA or wherever to get services and then miss classes,” said Sunny Clark, veterans student programs and services associate dean. “Our goal was to see how we could bring the services to our veterans.”

Donations funded the CCSF Veterans Resource Center’s construction and underwrote the cost of furnishing the space. IKEA provided the furniture, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark made a financial contribution and donated a stereo and flat-screen television, and, perhaps most importantly, the San Francisco Building Trades unions donated their labor and many of the materials needed for construction. The Associated Students provided start-up money.

Like most public universities, the California higher education system is operating with a shrinking budget. Clark, who also serves as director of the campus health center, said CCSF has been able to assign staff to the veteran center by asking existing employees to take on additional responsibilities.

The San Francisco Bay community came together to make the Veterans Resource Center a reality. While the city’s political compass is decidedly liberal, Clark said the outpouring of support for campus veterans is not surprising.

“We are a community of folks who are able to separate out however we might feel about the war,” Clark said. “These veterans served our country. They deserve our respect, and they deserve caring. We want to do everything we can to assist them with a smooth transition from military life to careers through education.”

Towers calls the CCSF Veterans Center a “game changer” because it has enabled veterans to come together on campus and find a voice. Their newfound clout led to veterans gaining priority registration for the college’s emergency book loan program. An emergency loan program also has been established for student veterans, funded with a $30,000 donation from Wells Fargo.

“The Veterans Center gives us a platform to get things done for ourselves, to advocate for ourselves,” Towers said. “The biggest thing is the camaraderie. We get roughly 160 vets coming through the center a day, interacting and talking about their problems.”

At San Diego State University, the new veterans center is an amenity-filled complex in the heart of the campus.

“We had a good location, but now we are in a better location,” Veterans Center Director Joan Putnam said. “It’s prime real estate and it said so much about the university and their backing and support for the military.”

SDSU opened the first veterans center in the California State University system two years ago. But with 1,041 veteran, active duty, and Reservist students and 626 military dependents now on campus, the center had outgrown its original walk-up window location.

The new veterans center includes a sitting area, the Ambassador Charles Hostler Conference Room, and the “Bunker,” a room where veterans can meet, study or relax. The custom-made furniture, appliances and computers were donated. SDSU’s Veterans Center also is one of only three locations in the country where the Veterans Administration has a Veterans Success counselor on-site.

In August 2009, SDSU also opened the first-in-the-nation Veterans House, a social center for veterans on Fraternity Row. Surrounding the Veterans House are eight two- to three-bedroom apartments that are assigned to veterans, active duty, ROTC or military dependents.

While SDSU’s multi-faceted veterans’ programs may be unique, Putnam said, all colleges – “no matter the size of the school or the number of veterans there” – should recognize the need to provide veterans with a meeting place.

“I think veterans centers are vital,” she said. “It gives them a home port – somewhere they can go to meet other people, if nothing else.”

Blaine Reynolds, a sophomore at the University of South Dakota, would agree. He wrote a column in the campus newspaper chastising the university for failing to provide student veterans with a “home on campus.” He argues that veterans, many of whom commute, need to be able to connect with other veterans.

“Veterans tend to understand each other a little better than traditional college students who are 18 or 19 and just out of high school,” Reynolds said. “We can help and relate things to each other.”

Reynolds, a member of the Air National Guard and an Iraq War veteran, said large, crowded student centers or libraries are not ideal locations for veterans to gather or study, because some combat veterans are uncomfortable in buildings where they are unable “to put their backs to the wall and see everything.”

At Towson University near Baltimore, Md., a potential 10-year wait for a veterans center became a reality within six months when two classrooms deemed unsuitable for teaching quickly were converted for veterans’ use.

Patrick Young, a Marine combat veteran and Towson University graduate, now serves as TU coordinator of veteran services. He believes creation of student veterans centers on campuses nationwide is a crucial to helping veterans avoid being among the 40 percent of students who drop out of college prior to graduation, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics.

“Most veterans are using the GI Bill so money isn’t the issue,” Young said. “The reason has to be access to resources, access to information, not connecting with students on campus who are supposed to be your peers but are at least four years younger than you. All this plays into why vets end up dropping out of school. It’s not because they can’t do the work. It’s because they are not connected with anybody on campus.”

While there are no statistics on the number of veterans centers nationwide, the American Council on Education – using college and university press releases as its guide – estimates hundreds of veterans centers have opened in the past four years.

“There has been significant growth,” said Jim Selby, assistant vice president for lifelong learning for ACE. “It is safe to say 200 to 300 have opened in the last four years, if not more.”