This book is intended for everyone in higher education - whether in the
classroom, student affairs, administration, admissions, health services
or faculty development - who is, or expects to be teaching, advising, or
serving student veterans.
This book is the outcome of a partnership between the Center for
Teaching and Learning and the office of Disabilities Services at the
University of South Dakota that led to the development of the Fides
program whose goal was to establish high-quality, evidence-based
development opportunities specifically designed to enable key university
constituencies--the faculty, staff, and administration--to understand
their role in providing extraordinary learning experiences for veterans.
The program was funded through a congressionally directed FIPSE grant.
Materials from Fides have been featured by prominent educational
organizations, and are being used by the National Center for PTSD,
colleges, universities, and boards of regents across the US.
This book provides the background and guidelines you need to leverage
the strengths that student veterans bring to your institution, to ease
the challenges they face in transitioning into higher education, to
facilitate their learning, and to ensure their successful graduation.
Student veterans bring many strengths to your campus - maturity,
significant life experiences, and cross-cultural awareness. They are
highly motivated to serve others and value education.
Student veterans may however face significant challenges. Student
veterans have typically been out of high school for some time, where
they may have earned average grades. Many are married with children and
more than a few are single parents. They are approximately 20% less
likely than non-veterans to attain a bachelor degree and slightly more
likely to drop out of higher education without attaining a degree of any
sort. Deployments extend their time to degree, and multiple deployments
can significantly delay graduation.
The challenges associated with transitioning from the military into
higher education are heightened when a student has a disability -
physical, psychological, or emotional. Common disabilities that are
emerging from Iraq and Afghanistan include amputations, hearing loss,
traumatic brain injury, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
To enable student veterans to succeed, institutions need to develop
holistic initiatives to mediate student veterans' transition and
persistence, and develop appropriate programs and services that
recognize their skills, family responsibilities, and distinct needs.
This book outlines best practices for student affairs; describes
innovative approaches to administrative services and support; suggests
streamlining policies and procedures to make the campus "veteran
friendly"; proposes ideas for academic programs; looks at the
implications for course structure and design; considers the classroom
environment; and explores how classroom policies impact student
veterans. One chapter examines the issue of student veteran success
specifically from the point of view of two-year institutions.
The authors stress the importance of collaborative approaches across
divisions and functions providing all stakeholders on campus with a
comprehensive view of how they can support each to ensure the success of
their student veterans.
