Job Hunt: Infinity

Today I attended and presented at a conference. One you probably haven't heard of. It ran from 9am-around 3:15. It included 3 sets of sessions, an opening key note, and lunch. The sessions offered a pretty wide variety of topics. The main theme (note: not  a theme to which adhere, but which the entire conference was focused on) was leadership education, meaning those working with student leaders. The conference attendance was small compared to big NASPA, less than 100 people.

My goal for this blog in 2017 was to post at least weekly, work got complicated and when I returned home at night I didn't have much energy to think or reflect or write. Starting Wednesday, February 8th until February 11th, I was at the NASPA Symposium on Military-Connected Students.

I haven't written here in a while, but I have been doing some writing. I'm working on a piece to be published in August in a new journal through University of North Carolina Charlotte. My paper will describe a new model to better understand the support systems student veterans have. It also gave me a wonderful opportunity to be surrounded by brilliant people during a writing retreat. I really can't say enough about the retreat. I felt like I was the dumbest one there. Half of the brilliant conversations I couldn't contribute to. I just soaked it all in. I met some amazing people doing even more amazing work. I learned about new best practices, tools, theories, data, and other work being done for student veterans. I love learning and it was like being in grad school again. I also decided on my next degree and even had a few programs suggested. The retreat was early June. Two days after I returned home, after spending one day at work, I had surgery on my left arm. Act...

When I was an undergrad I was an RA (shocker, I know). Husband started taking classes at a private institution around the same time I realized I could do this whole higher ed administration thing. So, part of his program was to take a calculus series. He took one course at a time, and in order to attend them he had to show up to his shift 2 hours early in order to leave 2 hours early. This meant he needed to get up stupid early so he showered at night and wore a ball cap to work and class. So this math class had a teacher, another shocker I know. And this teacher was an ass. He would make comments like "if you don't understand this, you had better practice saying 'do you want fries with that?'" He had a no-hats-in-class policy, and instead of treating husband like an adult, would knock on the brim and quip "no hats in class!" At some point, I don't remember what the final straw was I insisted that we needed to tell someone about the horrendous beha...

I presented during #NASPA16. My presentation did not focus on what I do professionally or my research area. I didn't propose the session, my name wasn't listed with it. But there I was, in front of a room talking about what it means to be authentic and professional while using social media. But here's the rub: I'm having a hard time personally curating my Twitter feed in the past several weeks. My job isn't very difficult, it's basic support staff stuff. But it does become hectic and chaotic with a lot of moving parts. The past few weeks we had many visitors through my office, I worked on multiple projects with people from other offices, and I had meetings of my own to attend. And I got frustrated. There were days when I was angry. There were days that when I got home I wondered why I should go back the next day. Normally, I would tweet about these things as ambiguously as possible but I don't feel "normal" online at the moment A few weeks ag...

Part II - Experiences on Campus While there is current research being done on support services for student veterans, “there is little or no information to assess whether the efforts by institutions to provide targeted programs and services are helpful to the veterans and service members enrolled in colleges and universities.” (Kim, Young, & Coles, 2013, p. 1). Also, there may be a problem with student veterans accessing those services, because some student veterans may not self-identify (Vacchi, 2012). Student veterans, even if they do identify, may not ask for help or want to feel like a burden (Vacchi, 2012). College campuses come with their own red tape, much of which can be difficult to navigate for student veterans (Vacchi, 2012). Some of this red tape can come from VA benefits, such as tuition payment that may come after the end of a billing cycle which can have consequences on campus (Vacchi, 2012). Another is health insurance, since most campuses require students to hav...

David Vacchi (2012) says it best: Colleges should expect student veterans to succeed. The White House estimates that more than 1 million military personnel will separate from the military by 2016 (Azziz, R., 2013). Some student veterans may have started their higher education either before or during active duty (Kim, Young M., & Coles, James S., 2013). “Veterans” may include those who served during wartime or not, active duty or reserves, National Guard members (Vacchi, 2012). However, student veterans and their transition “are not a new development in U.S. higher education” (Rumann & Hamrick, 2009). Student veterans may be part-time students who transfer in some credits (Schnoebelen, 2013). They may have responsibilities outside of college (Kim, Young M., & Coles, James S., 2013) including being married (Schnoebelen, 2013). According to the U.S. Department of Education, while 84 percent of veterans initially enroll in two-year institutions, 16 percent of veterans start...

There are several training programs in the country that help faculty and staff understand student veterans. One is Green Zone Training offered by The University of North Carolina and another is the Veterans Educator Training and Support (V.E.T.S.) Program at the University of Colorado. The one I’m going to review is the VET NET Ally program (Thomas, 2010). The VET NET Ally Program was created for California State University, Long Beavh in order to fulfill the need for a safe space for veterans and is modeled after the Safe Zone Ally training program (Thomas, 2010). It offers four hours of training for faculty and staff and includes a panel of student veterans (Thomas, 2010). There are four theme areas: program purpose, policies and procedures, military and post-military culture and transition, and personal identity issues (Thomas, 2010). Similar to Safe Zone training, participants are given a decal for displaying in offices or workspaces (Thomas, 2010). “[T]he primary goals of t...

There are many different programs, groups, and organizations that support student veterans. The ones here are nationally recognized, but they definitely aren’t the only ones out there. Do you know of one or work with one? Add it to the comments! The first student veteran organizations were formed after World War II when veterans began attending college, but many of these groups shrunk as that generation moved on (Summerlot et al., 2009). the first known organization was the American Veterans Committee (Summerlot et al., 2009). Organizations help veterans connect with others with military backgrounds, provide a safe space, and can assist with creating change on campus (Summerlot et al., 2009). Student Veterans of America (SVA) was formed in the Spring of 2007 (Summerlot et al., 2009). This was after veterans from Operation Eduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom returned home (Our Story). It began as student veterans on a campus to provide support for one another, and in 2008 differ...

So, first, let’s start by saying not all military veterans have PTSD or TBI, my husband doesn’t have either. Not all military veterans attending college have mental health issues (Baechtold & De Sawal, 2009). Not all military veterans are going to be disabled, and if they are considered disabled by the VA, you might not know it. If there is a student on your campus with PTSD, they are not likely to have it so bad that it’s out of control, if it was that bad, they wouldn’t be on campus. Not without a lot of support. Also: military veterans are not the only people who can be diagnosed with PTSD. Anyone who has ever had a traumatic experience can be diagnosed with PTSD. Anyone. Now, onto the research: Women military veterans are less likely to be diagnosed with PTSD than men (Baechtold & De Sawal, 2009). Situations that are stressful to 18-24 year old men may not be as stressful to women (Baechtold & De Sawal, 2009). Sexual harassment or assault while in the military is consid...

I’m not a veteran, but I am married to one. I know a good number of them. When I was studying for my Bachelor’s degree, my husband was (honorably) discharged from the Navy. He was offered a job before his separation date, he moved home, and started working immediately. Between work and the Montgomery GI Bill he attended school for free, taking a class a term. My husband does not have PTSD, injuries from his service, or use VA Health Care or services. Sometime after I decided I wanted to become a student affairs professional my husband encountered a nightmare at school. It made me so angry. We wrote a letter to the appropriate people, and from some insider information, that letter made it to the Provost. More on this in another post. In grad school I became interested in a lot of different areas, including adult education and underrepresented populations. When it came time to decide on research for my Master’s Thesis in the Spring of 2010, I had a few options, but I realized how...

Works Cited

Today was a day (but not the first) that I realized I will not stay at my institution for the long-term. I might not even stay in higher ed. Today showed me the two very different sides of retention, of risk factors, of student process. Today I was reminded of how powerless I am in the machine of higher ed. This afternoon I attended a training session focused on student retention and one of our efforts to reduce student loss. It was framed in a very interesting way: get students back on campus for Spring term. Take specific steps for a specific group of students: reach out, get in contact, work on a plan to get them back on campus for the Spring. There was no discussion about student success. No mention of student goals. We talked about process, numbers, data, and enrollment. Later in the day I attended a student veteran group meeting. One student veteran, after a discussion about being on campus, said "I would rather be back in Iraq". Yes. A student would rather be I...

I learned a lot regarding student veterans and what we, as student affairs professionals, think of student veterans. I tried to live-tweet and take notes during the student veterans sessions. There was one session in particular that I realized the people doing the research had no idea how to work with veterans and were desperately scrambling for any theory they understood. They found a fantastic lens to look at the veteran population, but they decided to jam the population into a theoretical framework that just didn’t work (in my opinion). One of the best presentations I attended was by Eric Wheeler, who works with the Academy for Veterans Success at Monroe Community College in Rochester, NY. One of the main take aways was that each campus has a unique population, and what works for one campus may not work for another. You can’t take one program and just plop it down on another campus and expect it to magically work. Veterans have one thing in common: they served in the military....