After World War II, Chancellor William Pearson Tolley announced Syracuse University’s commitment to military veterans. He began a tradition that is upheld today through the recent expansion of the school’s Office of Veteran and Military Affairs and its partnership with the Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF).

Both organizations host career fairs, employment and networking opportunities, interviewing advising and more that benefit student veterans on campus. But officials are working to further increase opportunities at SU for student veterans with a new, one-credit career focused class and a Washington, D.C., immersion trip.

Although SU is a model for how a university should help student veterans, there are still improvements to be made, said Rosalinda Vasquez Maury, director of applied research at IVMF.

Vasquez said some of the possible challenges student veterans face include raising a family, working a full-time job and having physical and mental disabilities. While the average college student may only have to balance classwork with extracurriculars, student veterans typically face more responsibilities because of age demographics, she said.

The inflexibility of undergraduate class schedules makes it difficult for student veterans to take the classes they need to graduate, she said, because they have other responsibilities that the traditional college student does not. This could potentially push their graduation time back, and they could run out of the money granted to them by the government through the GI Bill that funds their education.

Katherine Quartaro, a student veteran studying forensic science and psychology, faces a different set of challenges than the ‘traditional’ student. Hieu Nguyen | Staff Photographer

Katherine Quartaro, a senior forensic science and psychology double major and student veteran, also sees a divide between “traditional” students and student veterans in her classes.

“It’s easy for student veterans to be invisible because not everyone understands or appreciates our experiences, but everyone can learn from each other,” she said. “We come with our own set of challenges and bring a lot of experience and perspective to campus.”

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Quartaro said she believes that the campus could benefit from the diversity student veterans bring to SU and wishes they weren’t so separated from the other college students.

Jennifer Pluta, an assistant director of veteran career services with the Office of Veteran and Military Affairs, said the office is beginning to implement new initiatives to help student veterans both in and out of the classroom.

The Office of Veteran and Military Affairs works with various employer partners in an attempt to ensure that student veterans see a wide array of job opportunities available to them.

Hieu Nguyen | Staff Photographer

Pluta said she works to ease students into the process of transitioning into the civilian sector, pulling out transferrable skills they can use after serving in the military. As a prior Army reserve counselor, Pluta uses her experience to customize services for students and tries to place them in jobs within six months of graduating.

For Quartaro, the resources available on campus helped with her transition from being in the Marine Corps to living a different lifestyle as a college student. She is involved with the Student Veterans Organization on campus and has served as the secretary.

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When choosing to attend SU originally, she said it was the veteran programs that interested her most.

“When I looked at SU, as it pertained to veterans, I saw that they had so many resources compared to other schools I looked at,” she said. “When I first toured campus, I was taken to the veterans lounge, and I immediately felt welcomed.”

The changes made to the programs available to student veterans this year are due to the university truly listening to the feedback provided by the students, Quartaro said.

In addition to the military-friendly attitude toward student veterans on campus, Quartaro said no matter what she was going through, the student veteran community understood her situation and supported her, even if they didn’t know her personally. It’s that camaraderie, she said, that emphasizes the importance of a student veteran community on campus.

Published on August 28, 2018 at 10:16 pm

Contact Brooke: bnkato@syr.edu