Uniform Meets Rhetoric: Excellence through Interaction

Between Order and Execution: A Phenomenological Approach to the Role of Relationships in Military Culture

“…we might trace back the desire for belonging to the collectivist ethos of the military; Blackwell-Starnes points out as well that the collectivist ethos serves all students regardless of background. One aspect of belonging is the ability to trust instructors (Wright, 2016); furthermore, the need for a trust that exceeds the conventional student-instructor dynamic can be of the utmost importance to veterans in college classrooms (Morrow & Hart, 2014;Mallory & Downs, 2014).…”

“…A commonplace around veteran compliance suggests that veterans desire orders or understand orders because their compliance is conditioned by military service. Service members comply unconditionally and leaders are charged with using clear orders (Mallory & Downs, 2014). To be sure, these are also possibilities of military experience, and a habit of unconditional compliance can be carried by veterans into civilian life.…”

At Ease: Developing Veterans’ Sense of Belonging in the College Classroom

“…(Blackwell-Starnes, 2014) I anticipated some students would already know at least one person in the class, whether from a shared social group, sports team, another shared course, of from an arrangement made during registration; however, I knew most students, especially in core courses, would enter the course without knowing any of their classmates, thus committing to a semester-long peer group would seem a daunting endeavor. For this reason, alerting students to the use of peer groups in the syllabus and discussing the peer groups during the first weeks of class would better prepare all students and encourage student veterans to meet their classmates and inspect cues from them as they do from their instructor and syllabus (Mallory & Downs, 2014). Students getting to know their peers during the first weeks of class would be imperative to facilitating successful peer groups, and I planned for several opportunities for students to meet and work with their peers through the first two weeks of the class.…”

“…From these two groups, I hypothesized that incorporating a more formal chain of command among peer group members could further assist student veterans in developing a sense of belonging to the class. I revised the syllabus statement for the course to include preliminary information about the peer leader role, taking my cue from the observations of Mallory and Downs (2014) that "veterans are fine readers of rhetorical situations, and from the opening moments of class, they are inspecting cues amidst syllabi and instructor demeanor, language and responses to see where they fit and what is expected and allowed" (p. 63). I intended the revised statement to signal to student veterans that they might find their place in the peer leader role.…”

Understanding the experiences of women student veterans during their transition process from the military into higher education : identity, belonging, and voice in writing courses and writing assignments in other disciplines

“…Through interviews with 5 student veterans, including Mallory, the pair gleaned information regarding the difference between military discourse and academic discourse, as well as how the former could have been brought into the latter to best support student veterans (Mallory & Downs, 2014). Within military discourse, which placed emphasis on all thinking as one to accomplish a common goal, existed scripts: these were training procedures documented in writing that covered the mission, duties, and actions of military personnel.…”