California Community Colleges Take the Lead in Educating Veterans

By Angeline Huang Evans

He’s been out of the service for over a year, but his closely cropped hair, concentrated demeanor, and alert brown eyes give the impression that he has been highly trained. It has been a hot summer, and the sergeant’s snug fitting t-shirt and casual shorts expose his years of physical conditioning.

Last fall, thanks to the Montgomery GI Bill’s educational benefits, the 25-year-old enrolled for the first time at Sierra College in Rocklin. This summer he joined the ranks of over 75,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who applied for the new Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2008, which expands educational benefits for those who have served since September 11, 2001. Passed by Congress in June 2008, the new legislation covers tuition and fees for any in-state, public institution, and also provides a housing and books allowance to those who qualify.

	Images courtesy of Matthew Calderon

From Combat to the Classroom
Growing up in the Sacramento suburb of Citrus Heights, Calderon never considered enlisting in the military. He never really thought about his career at all. After attending 12 different high schools, Calderon was just happy to have a diploma and land a job making $12 an hour painting in a fabrication shop. That all changed when a buddy announced he was joining the Marines.

“I never actually saw myself joining until it just kind of clicked one day—‘Why don’t I do that?’” Calderon says. “I guess I saw the Marines as a way of keeping me in line while I grew up. Sacramento just wasn’t working for me—I just kept getting into trouble. I never got in trouble with the law, but it was going in that direction.”

Calderon’s friendly demeanor and upbeat attitude almost make you forget that the young man is a combat veteran. In the Marines, Calderon was a heavy equipment and watercraft mechanic, a job he both enjoyed and did well. He spent two years stationed in Japan, and after returning to San Diego for a brief time, he was sent to Fallujah, Iraq, for seven months, where he split his time between the command center and the security detachment, manning security posts and embarking on missions. Calderon’s memories of his time in Iraq are not pleasant. He uses two words repeatedly to describe his experience: miserable and hot.

“It was 130 degrees, but wearing full combat gear it felt like 190 degrees,” Calderon recalls. “I would drink one of those gallon bottles of water and still be thirsty. I could never drink enough water. It was just a miserable time.” When asked about his combat experience, his face gets serious. His security clearance makes him weary of sharing any details, but it is apparent that he has seen and experienced things that most college students can’t even imagine. The surreality of his experience didn’t hit him until after he returned home.

“I went through those experiences, and then when I came back and started telling stories, it was like, ‘Wow. It really happened like that.’ It’s crazy,” says Calderon. The stark contrast of his life before and after Iraq took its toll. “I became an insomniac. My doctor gave me sleeping pills so I’m better now, but for the first few semesters I just didn’t sleep. I was running on about two hours of sleep a night if I was lucky. I was groggy, cranky,not social, not happy…. Lack of sleep leads to depression, and I was having anxiety attacks too. Once I started sleeping the anxiety attacks almost came to a complete halt.”

Calderon’s experience is not uncommon. Each year, approximately 300,000 veterans return home from foreign duty. With the increasing withdrawal of troops from the Middle East, that number will grow. Once a soldier gets out of the service, one of the biggest challenges is the transition back into civilian life. Not only do they have to readjust to living with their families or on their own, many also feel lost due to the lack of structure. For many, coming back means picking up their education where they left off, and because of the time spent away from school—usually four years or longer—community colleges are a common destination.

Destination Education
Community colleges have long been popular with returning veterans, and California has one of the largest veteran populations at over 2 million. Out of over 21,500 students that used military education benefits at a public higher education institution in California in the 2008–09 academic year, over 17,000, or nearly 80 percent, used their benefits at a California Community College. The number of veterans entering California’s higher education institutions is projected to increase by approximately 34,000 by 2010, with Community Colleges absorbing the largest number of students. Countless others return to school without using GI benefits, making the true number of veterans at a California college or university difficult to pin down.

The reasons for choosing a community college are simple. The open access and the variety of vocational programs make it easier for vets to pick up where they left off and put the skills they learned in the service to use quickly. The low cost of California Community Colleges and the financial aid options available allow them to explore their career options with less financial pressure. It often takes more than four years to complete a bachelor’s degree, but benefits only cover 36 months or approximately eight semesters; some veterans opt to pay for community college on their own so they can save their benefits to use at a university.

In 2004, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger launched the Troops to College Initiative. Troops to College gathered representatives from all levels of higher education in California as well as from each branch of the armed forces to work together to better meet the needs of student veterans. To date, Community Colleges have established new methods of inter-campus communication among veterans service offices, created an advisory group for veterans’ issues, and made efforts to increase sensitivity to veterans’ issues among faculty, administration, and students.

On the national level, the new Post-9/11 GI Bill has ramped up educational support and the new legislation is a great boon for veterans, but the process hasn’t been as easy as it sounds. Details on administering the benefits and veteran eligibility were not nailed down until this July, only one month before most institutions began their fall term. To compound the issue, many community colleges are dealing with limited funding.

Colleges are also working to address health and support services. Between 20 and 30 percent of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan screen positive for post traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, depression, or other mental health issues; many have a combination of these issues. All of California’s Community Colleges employ certified counselors, available to any student who is interested and initiates the relationship. Veterans, however, tend not to ask. Sometimes it’s pride, sometimes they genuinely don’t realize they need help. Counselors typically do both academic and personal counseling, and while they have the Veterans Administration to help them understand the academic needs of veterans, they may not have the training to help veterans deal with their combat experience.

More than Just a Helping Hand
While there are still challenges to serving veterans, community colleges have generally embraced their student veterans. A number of schools have made significant progress in their veterans’ services, leading other campuses to follow suit. Veterans now benefit from transitional programs and community events, student organizations, and additional campus support.

Photo by Bryan Miller and Chris Rumble

Transitional programs are a main focus on some campuses. Citrus College in particular has been offering a Boots to Books course since Fall 2007. The curriculum was the brainchild of Manuel Martinez, a local veteran trauma counselor and Vietnam veteran. He shopped it around to several Southern California Community Colleges before finding support in Bruce Solheim,   a history instructor and volunteer veterans’ services coordinator at Citrus. Solheim was able to adapt an existing counseling course to incorporate Martinez’s curriculum, streamlining the process to offering the course. Martinez’s idea came from his own experience returning from the Vietnam War.
“Being on a college campus at that time, the anti-war sentiment was very strong,” Martinez recalls. “A class like this couldn’t have happened back then. There would have been protesting outside. I just didn’t want this generation of veterans to go through the same thing.”

The course is listed under the counseling department and touches on study skills, services available on campus and in the community, and how to identify a combat stress injury. Any student may enroll, but most have a connection to veterans, whether they are a family member, close friend, boyfriend, girlfriend, or a veteran themselves.

Sierra College in Rocklin has taken a slightly different approach for its Boots to Books program. Veterans Counselor Catherine Morris, a veteran of three branches of the armed forces herself, noticed that many students tested into remedial English but had trouble with the general population remedial English classes. She teamed up with an English instructor to offer Boots to Books and remedial English as a pair of classes that students take during the same term. Not only do students get consistency with the same classmates in two courses, but Morris and Michelle Johnson, the English teacher, also take time out of their personal schedules to attend the other’s classes, when possible, and offer up commentary whenever there is an overlap that can be drawn between the two classes.

Other colleges have centralized their services to make them more accessible and welcoming to veterans. Citrus College is one school that has done this successfully. Launched in May 2009 with a $100,000 WalMart grant, the college’s Veterans Center is a haven for veterans to get their GI benefits and student services as well as socialize with other veterans and study. Approximately 120 veterans attend Citrus College using GI Bill benefits, according to Teresa Ferri, the college’s veterans certifying official, whose office is located in the Veterans Center. The center has been a hub for student activities and a welcoming front door for returning veterans.
“[The Veterans Center] is somewhere where a veteran can go where there are other veterans and people around that understand we’re a different type of student,” says JD Serna, a Citrus College student who served with the Air Force in Iraq. He tried his hand at community college right after getting out of the service in 2005, but had trouble and withdrew quickly.  After being diagnosed and treated for post traumatic stress disorder, Serna decided to give college another chance, enrolling at Citrus this past spring. “This time has definitely been different, especially with the Boots to Books class and the Veterans Center.”

In addition to Ferri’s office, the center includes a lounge with a television, refrigerator and microwave, study area with computers and printers, and a utility office for the veterans counselor, veterans club president, and others who hold office hours during the week. Colleges across the state have also put on Road Home events, bringing together campus and community resources to share information on veterans’ needs and services. Student organizations for veterans and supporters are also available on many campuses.

Doing it Right
While veterans’ services have come along way in recent years, there is still progress to be made. The Post-9/11 GI Bill is a major step in the right direction; the next step is for colleges with successful veterans programs to share ideas and resources with those that have yet to establish such programs, expanding the reach of transitional help throughout the state. 

Matthew Calderon, the Sierra College student and ex Marine, found the veterans club at Sierra College to be especially important in his transition. Not only do the men and women there understand what he’s been through as a combat veteran, but they have also gone through the shared experience of returning and starting anew on a community college campus. “You don’t have to hold back with these guys,” Calderon says. “You can talk about what happened and what you saw and stuff.  Most likely they’ve been through very similar situations, so you don’t really have to censor your story or feel awkward about telling your story. They’ve seen it too, most of them.”
Despite the challenges, Calderon is making progress toward his goal of earning a bachelor’s degree. Although he hasn’t decided on a specific major—he’s thinking engineering or science—his counselor at Sierra College has helped him map out a plan to continue making progress. “I’m already getting a late start,” explains Calderon. “I don’t want to waste any time. Hopefully, I’ll do it right the first time.”