Teaching Veterans Studies: Bridging the Gap Between U.S. Civilians and Veterans through the College Classroom

Student-Veterans’ Perceptions of Barriers, Support, and Environment at a High-Density Veteran Enrollment Campus

“…Important here is the extent to which student veterans feel disconnected from civilians in a military community and on a campus with multiple efforts existing to support student veteran transitions. An implication for RI and other universities is that additional approaches to helping civilian students understand and communicate effectively with veterans may be warranted (Hodges, 2018).…”

“…Dialoging with students and sharing experiences and common frustrations as a group can create opportunities for students to develop resilience and agency for success. While most of the existing supports at RI are either faculty-or veteran-facing, another avenue would be to encourage more robust inclusion within the cross-discipline curriculum of scholarship related to military/veteran experience (Hodges, 2018;Smith, 2018). This would have the dual benefit of allowing veterans to see themselves in the curriculum and to increase civilian students' knowledge and understanding of military service given the civilian/military gap.…”

Empowering Female [Student] Veterans through Community Writing and Experiential Learning in the Classroom

“…Simply put, female voices are often excluded from the "war canon" in various types of media and narrative-from movies and television to war novels, poems, and memoirs-even though the Veterans Alliance (VA) reports that women comprise roughly 15-20% of US Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines enlistees (National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics, 2017, p.1). Though the public's image of the veteran tends to be white, male, and combat experienced, such a perception misses the large number of veterans who are women, non-white, and who have never deployed (Hodges, 2018).…”

“…First, the lack of understanding between what civilians know and understand about what servicepeople experience is known as the military-civilian gap (Smith, 2018). This gap is exacerbated by the relatively small percentage of the general population who serve in the military-roughly 6%-as well as the fact that the percentage of the population that has served has steadily decreased amongst the demographics of younger generations compared to older generations during the latter half of the 20th century: for example, 79% of 50-64-year-olds have an immediate family member who served compared to 33% of 18-29-year-olds (Hodges, 2018). Second, student veterans tend to be nontraditional students who are older than their civilian counterparts and less likely to have commonalities with them in terms of home life and general responsibilities; in 2016, student veterans enrolled at two and four-year colleges using the Post-9/11 GI Bill ranged from 24-40-years-old, with an average age of 25 (Drebing et al, 2018;Postsecondary National Policy Institute [PNPI], 2019).…”

“…Nearly 20% of female veterans utilize their GI Bill benefits to complete college degrees after they serve, and these veterans often have greater difficulty acclimating to their new identities as students within the larger campus community (Heineman, 2017). While VSOs can play an important role in rebuilding eroded support levels and creating a social bridge for transitioning veterans, studies indicate that many current organizations do not reach women veterans with ideal effect (Hodges 2018;Thomas et al, 2017). This article argues that the presence of veteran community writing groups on college campuses that are directed toward females may encourage female student veterans to disclose and self-identity their veteran status.…”