With a federal grant for Clark Faculty’s veterans middle expiring, college students fear they received’t obtain the assist they should keep at school.
The grant paid for 2 of the 4 employees positions on the middle, in addition to 25 laptops and different tools. The middle — which has rooms for conferences and finding out, in addition to couches and an air hockey desk — is the place college students go to get assist accessing U.S. Division of Veterans Affairs advantages.
Of Clark Faculty’s 8,500 or so college students, about 400 are veterans and 800 are navy kids or spouses.
“The biggest thing we do is we create a sense of community here at the college for military-affiliated students,” stated Donna Larson, a U.S. Air Drive veteran and affiliate director of the veterans middle. “They have a safe place where they can come. We can advocate for them.”
Grant dries up
In 2020, Clark’s Veterans Middle of Excellence obtained a $449,460 grant for the 2021-23 funds yr. The U.S. Division of Schooling prolonged Clark’s grant to the tip of 2024 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted companies.
Navy partner Monica Patton started working because the veterans middle program coordinator in January, however her grant-funded place ends this month.
The veterans middle adviser, the opposite place funded by the expiring grant, now works on Clark Faculty’s educational advising workforce and is instructing different advisers the right way to serve veterans and military-affiliated college students.
In her function on the middle, Patton organized an occasion celebrating the middle’s tenth anniversary, in addition to a profession and useful resource truthful and helped college students resurrect the Veterans Membership.
“We won’t be able to provide the level of support or events that we have this year,” Larson stated. “We kind of knocked the ball out of the park with all the things that we were able to do, but we will be trying to do our best to do whatever we can to support our students.”
Larson would be the solely worker within the veterans middle after Dec. 31 till the school hires a college certifying officer, a place that manages schooling advantages from the U.S. Division of Veterans Affairs. (The one that beforehand held that place resigned a couple of weeks in the past.)
The varsity can also be within the means of hiring an interim, part-time college certifying officer.
“Right now, I’m doing all of the enrollment certifications for students to the VA so that they will get their benefits on time and as planned in the coming term,” Larson stated. “The level of support just won’t be able to be the same without having the extra position there.”
Scholar considerations
College students took their considerations about decreased veterans middle staffing to Larson, in addition to Clark’s trustees and administration. Veteran college students, together with Tysson Dykes, spoke at a number of trustee conferences over the previous three months.
Dykes, a U.S. Air Drive veteran, is a sophomore finding out cybersecurity. He’s additionally president of the Veterans Membership.
“We, on several occasions, have helped prevent students from being homeless, helped ensure that students ate, that they had the proper computer equipment they needed for coursework and just built their sense of community,” Dykes stated. “Then, we see those things going away and the support from the college dwindle.”
Dykes stated he’s transferring to Decrease Columbia Faculty in Longview due to uncertainty about Clark’s veterans middle.
“The lack of communication and transparency definitely has been cause for alarm,” Dykes stated. “The community that we’ve spent the past year building is being systematically chipped away, and it seems like nobody wants to talk about it.”
The scholars aren’t the one ones who voiced considerations. On the Dec. 4 assembly of Clark’s board of trustees, representatives from the Washington Public Workers Affiliation stated the school administration doesn’t do sufficient to make sure that grant-funded applications are sustainable over time.
Busha stated that the Veterans Middle of Excellence will stay open and serve college students because it has for the previous 10 years.
“The college’s commitment to our veterans remains strong,” she stated. “The ending of this grant creates transitions in how and where some services are offered. It is understandable that students who built relationships with staff who won’t be working in the (Veterans Center of Excellence) will miss their personal connections.”