Sunday, July 13, 2008

College for veterans

A new, much-improved GI Bill, signed into law last week, will go a long way toward helping combat veterans pay for college. With billions in new federal dollars available – an estimated $62 billion over 10 years – college leaders are thinking about how to attract veterans, in part by matching more money with, well, more money. Ohio’s governor on Tuesday signed an executive order extending lower in-state tuition rates to GI Bill enrollees from out of state. Nazareth College, in Rochester, recently announced a new veterans scholarship to supplement the G.I. Bill. It’s worth up to $7,500 per year for four years.

But, beyond money (obviously quite important), what’s going to make them stay? “I think people are starting to look at veterans as a population and looking at how we can integrate them and transition them into higher education,” said Kathy Snead, president of the Servicemembers Opportunity Colleges Consortium. “I know we are getting questions and inquiries from a lot of groups about, ‘What do the numbers look like; how many veterans do you think will enroll in college?’ That’s hard to tell. But obviously colleges that are more well-equipped, who anticipate the needs of veterans, will certainly draw the attention of veterans.”

Snead said key priorities identified by student veterans include peer-to-peer advising programs, specialized orientations and veteran student centers or lounges. She advocates that colleges set up task forces to identify “military-friendly” approaches they can adopt in academic and student services, counseling, and other domains. “It’s fertile ground, so there are all sorts of possibilities for what colleges can do.”

One of Schupp’s students witnessed the hanging of burned bodies over a bridge in Iraq. “You go from that situation to sitting in English class trying to learn about dangling participles with 18-year-old freshmen asking if you killed anybody. You can see the transition is pretty hard,” Schupp said.

Cleveland State’s SERV represents one institution’s unique approach to easing the transition. Schupp, who’s not a veteran himself, was first inspired to start such a program after hearing about the academic and adjustment issues faced by a student who’d been deployed to Kosovo. He began asking veterans from the Vietnam and Persian Gulf Wars what they would have wanted out of their colleges. Out of their answers came SERV, built around five ideals – including lowering the bureaucratic barriers that stand between the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which distributes the GI Bill benefits, and the university (barriers that the veterans themselves are often left straddling). SERV also aims to connect prospective employers with veterans, and, for their first two semesters, offers veterans-only general education classes.

This spring, Cleveland State offered its first four general education courses for veterans. No one has to enroll in the veterans-only classes: Out of around 300 veterans expected on campus this coming fall, Schupp projects that each of four general education classes will attract 20 to 25 students each. Out of 14 in Schupp’s chemistry class this spring, 10 got a C or better, two withdrew for medical reasons, one withdrew because of a family problem and “one joined a fraternity so I lost him, he’s gone.” ("I just never saw him,” Schupp said.)

Schupp described the courses as still experimental, and said he’ll be evaluating outcomes after the first year. ("As a research person, being a chemist, I look into why things work and why they don’t work and getting a cause behind it and finding a solution,” he said.)

Asked whether separating veterans into their own classes isolates them, Schupp said he recommends that students take at least one course with civilians, and pointed out that the veterans-only classes only extend through the first two semesters. “The goal is not to isolate them, the goal is to have them slowly transition,” he said, arguing, for instance, that many veterans have an easier time concentrating when, instead of being surrounded by civilians they’re trained to protect, they’re encircled by other veterans, their “team.” “They’re trained to assess crowds and assess situations and find the danger in them. That’s what they’re trained to do, not to focus on a test. The team is what helps you survive. College campuses are all individual. All I’m trying to do is recreate the team concept,” Schupp said.

“When you’re in a large boxed-in area, you may tell yourself, ‘I’m in school, I’m in college,’ but you automatically have that fight-or-flight response. The veterans classes are smaller. You’re surrounded by people who did similar things as you in the same area,” said Joshua Miller, a former infantry medic who started classes at Cleveland State this spring. “I liked the idea of vet-only classes because as much as I didn’t miss being in Iraq or Afghanistan, I did miss the camaraderie I had when I was in the military,” Miller said. “Just because you got out of the military doesn’t mean you stop being a soldier. You’re always going to be a soldier. And you’re always going to take care of each other. That’s what you do.” .....

Many interviewed for this article described offering specialized services for veterans – administrative, social and, in the case of Cleveland State, academic – in seemingly counterintuitive terms. The specialized programs, they stressed, are ultimately intended to integrate veterans into the broader campus community. Snead, of the Servicemembers Opportunity Colleges Consortium, said that she’s not concerned about whether such programs could instead have the opposite effect of isolating veterans. “By and large, students lean on people like them, peer groups and support groups, to transition, whatever special interest they might have,” Snead said. She added that, over time and through various classroom and campus interactions, “the differentiation between veteran and nonveteran may become very, very blurred.”

Snead said that the consortium has joined with some other higher education associations in developing a national survey to assess the scope of on-campus veterans programs. Without any hard data yet, it’s her sense anecdotally, she said, that the majority of colleges have not yet designated veterans student lounges and the like.

Yet, the progress and now passage of the new GI Bill does seem to be generating an uptick of interest in, for instance, setting up one-stop student services shops for veterans, or establishing veterans centers or lounges. A bill introduced in January by Rep. Rubén Hinojosa (D-Tex.) and Rep. Michael Castle (R-Del.) — which, according to Hinojosa’s staff, is included in compromise legislation to renew the Higher Ed Act – would authorize a federal grant program for colleges that set up “model programs to support veteran student success.” Under the terms of the legislation, qualifying colleges would establish a Center of Excellence for Veteran Student Success, develop a veterans support team involving representatives from admissions, registration, financial aid, veterans benefits, academic advising, health, career advising, disabilities and other relevant areas, hire a full- or part-time coordinator, and monitor veteran student enrollment, persistence and completion.

More here





Australian schools ignoring the Holocaust

The Left has now reverted to its prewar antisemitism so this omission from Left-dominated curricula is no surprise

An obsession with Australian history in curriculums has left students able to leave school without knowing that the Holocaust occurred. In a speech to high school principals, NSW education department head Michael Coutts-Trotter regretted the omission of the Holocaust from the state's mandatory history course. "I discovered for the first time about a month ago that you can get through compulsory schooling in NSW and never know that the Holocaust, the destruction of Jews in Europe, actually happened," he said. "You will know a lot about Don Bradman, and that's terrific. But I think to live life, you need to know the Holocaust happened."

The only mention of the Holocaust in the NSW syllabus for Years 7-10 is in the beginning, with the rationale for the course starting with a quotation from a Holocaust survivor about the importance of learning history. Compulsory history or social studies courses for schools in the other states also fail to mention the Holocaust.

A spokeswoman for the NSW Board of Studies said the history course for Years 7-10 had a lot to cover and the board did not want to overcrowd the curriculum. "There are opportunities to study the Holocaust and its consequences in a number of ways in both mandatory and elective history," she said.

Asked about those opportunities, the board pointed to the website of the Sydney Jewish Museum, which highlighted links to NSW syllabuses. The museum suggests it could be the subject of a site visit, compulsory for Year 9 students, and for Year 10 students looking at post-war Australia to the 1970s, it suggests examining the contribution of Jewish migrants.

The NSW Jewish Board of Deputies said yesterday it had been concerned for some time about the omission of the Holocaust from school history, and was working with the education department and the board of studies on the issue. Board chief executive Vic Alhadeff said the Jewish community regarded as essential the signposting across the curriculum of issues relating to discrimination, racism and genocide, including the Holocaust. "It is indeed possible to complete 13 years of schooling in NSW without having studied the Holocaust," he said. "This is a matter of great concern to the Jewish community, which works towards social cohesion as a matter of principle."

Wollongong University professor of history and politics Gregory Melleuish said the nation had become increasingly obsessed with Australian history over the past 10 or 15 years. "So we tend to look at things like World War I and II as Australia's involvement rather than what was at stake, why did it occur and what was going on," Professor Melleuish said. "Part of the problem of doing it from the point of view of Australia is students get the perspective that Australia saves the world."

Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard said the Government had asked the National Curriculum Board to develop a rigorous world-class curriculum for all students in four initial areas, including history.

Opposition education spokesman Tony Smith said it should not be possible for a student to leave school without being taught key events such as the two world wars, the Holocaust and the Cold War.

Source

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