Colleges are working to build a community for military students

Located adjacent to the main shopping center of the University of South Carolina campus is the school's Veterans and Military Center of Excellence, which since 2021 has served as a retreat for veterans to learn about their benefits or simply relax with other former military members.

But in recent years, more and more non-veterans have been found in the building.

“We're really trying to engage our military-dependent student body along with veterans,” said Candace Terry, executive director of veterans and military affairs at the university. “We invite them into the lounges, we bring them in because they also deserve it through their service as a family member.

“And that’s important because they provide a unique bridge between the general student body and veterans. They have an idea of ​​what lifestyles and identities look like. And they can help share that.”

The University of South Carolina was ranked as the No. 7 school in the Military Times 2024 Best for Vets Colleges rankings, due in large part to these types of efforts to both address and provide pathways to veterans' needs Find to better integrate transitioning veterans into campus life through developmental outreach and induction efforts.

“Right now we have about 900 family members on campus and about 200 veterans,” Terry said. “It’s really important to us that we make sure all of our military-connected students feel included.”

This focus on building communities and addressing the individual needs of veterans and Guardsmen is a common theme among the top schools on the list, which is compiled annually to highlight the top-performing educational institutions and their best practices in reaching out to the military community.

“We don’t rate schools based on how many experienced students they have or don’t have. It's more about what their policies are,” said Hilary Niles, survey coordinator for the Best for Vets list.

“Part of it is certainly financial support for military students and the extent to which schools go beyond the educational services they already provide. But do they have strategies in place to engage with military-connected students in a way that makes higher education accessible and helps these students succeed?”

Additional Veteran Resources

The University of the Incarnate Word, for example, which has been the top school on the list for the past two years, offers annual training and guidance for staff, faculty and students with a “Military 101” course.

The university also has a unique Space Force ROTC program, and university leadership sends out regular email reminders about best practices for working with military-connected students.

California State University-San Bernardino, this year's No. 12 school, offers workforce training with a focus on military-related disabilities. Texas Tech University, ranked No. 9 on the list, was just named the new home of the Armed Forces & Society Journal.

At the University of Nebraska at Omaha, the second-ranked school on the 2024 Best For Vets list, officials have held small group meetings with veterans and military-connected students for the past two years to talk about their biggest needs and challenges.

“Right now, that focus seems to be on career readiness, things like connecting with employers and making sure that as we get these students through our programs, there are opportunities waiting for them,” said Sara Karnowski, director of military and veteran services at UN.

“That's why we're working on ways to leverage both what veterans bring from their time in the military and what they've gained through higher education, and then show them how to better market themselves to employers. And the response so far has been very positive.”

Nearly 11% of the University of Nebraska at Omaha's student body is military-affiliated. The college campus is located approximately 12 miles from Offutt Air Force Base, home to approximately 15,000 military and military personnel.

“So we have military representation in the region and across campus,” Karnowski said. “One of our college deans is a veteran, one of our senior vice chancellors is a veteran. We have veterans in campus security and all the way up to our senior academic administrators.”

That makes it easier to discuss the needs of veterans and their family members at the college, but doesn't diminish the importance of those discussions, she said.

Future goals

Terry said school leadership helps promote these conversations on its South Carolina campus, among other things, through service projects such as the school's annual 9/11 commemoration ceremonies.

Each year, student veterans raise hundreds of flags to remember those killed in the terrorist attacks in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, DC. And Terry said the number of volunteers continues to grow every year.

“While our veterans are out there raising these flags, the general student body will stop and have a conversation about what this event means to us,” said Terry, a Navy veteran. “And we talk about what it meant for our service and how it shaped us during that time.

“It’s exciting because a lot of the students we’re talking to now weren’t alive when this happened.”

Terry said one of the veterans center staff's goals in the coming years is to place greater emphasis on faculty involvement in veterans affairs and engagement to build more transition knowledge for the campus as students' classes move through their degrees.

Karnowski said University of Nebraska at Omaha officials will focus on expanding their listening sessions in the coming years, with a greater focus on the specific needs of military members.

The school has changed the name of its veterans center to the Military-Connected Resource Center in recent years to welcome more military family members, similar to South Carolina.

“I think most of our effort goes into making sure that we are intentionally engaging with our students,” she said, “so that they know that we are not just trying to attract them to this institution, but that we want it too.” Join them on this journey and give them a really good opportunity at the end.”

Niles said a trend she has seen in compiling the Best For Vets college list in recent years is universities using the rankings to see how other schools are succeeding and those ideas then copy them to their own locations.

“We get a lot of thanks every year after that because it essentially gives everyone a roadmap of what policies to consider,” she said. “It serves as a map of opportunities to support military-connected students.”