Preparing your campus for veterans' success : an integrated approach to facilitating the transition and persistence of our military students

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 programmes and services that recognise 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 programmes; 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.