Preparing Your Campus for Veterans' Success : An Integrated Approach to Facilitating the Transition and Persistence of Our Military Students

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 associ