IUPUI Receives Grant to Promote Academic Success Among Student Service Members and Veterans

The IUPUI Office for Veterans & Military Personnel has received a $49,887 grant it will use to create what it hopes will become a model program to boost the academic success of student military service members and veterans nationwide.

The initiative will begin in the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology at IUPUI, which tends to attract the largest number of veterans on campus, said Winnie Wilson, Manager of the Office for Veterans & Military Personnel.

The office also has had a close working relationship with Engineering and Technology, which collaborated with the veterans’ office to apply for the Operation Diploma grant from the Military Family Research Institute based at Purdue University, Wilson added, citing the work of Stephen P. Hundley, Ph.D., Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Undergraduate Programs and Associate Professor of Organizational Leadership and Supervision; Terri Talbert-Hatch, Assistant Dean for Student Services; and Elizabeth Wager, Adult Prior Learning Academic Advisor.

A reviewer of the funding proposal particularly liked the approach of focusing the grant on an IUPUI unit that seems to be attracting most veterans and student service members, noting, “focusing efforts on academic majors that are more likely to attract military students and that have been good team players in the past is a good idea.”

Among the program’s components will be a needs assessment, including focus groups and research with veterans in Engineering and Technology to determine what they need from the campus to help them succeed.

Other components will include creating program-level articulations for specific degrees, launching an engineering and technology student veterans’ organization, and developing first-year seminar courses for student veterans interested in engineering and technology.
One need that will be addressed is already well-known, Wilson said. A common issue among veterans is the concern that they don’t receive sufficient college credit for the training they’ve received in the military.

“The goal is to have engineers and technologists from the military receive applicable college credit for their extensive military training,” Wilson said.

The school will form a board of faculty to review the training veterans have received, using military transcripts of that training to equate it to a college curriculum, informed from the American Council of Education (ACE) guide for military transfer credit, according to Wilson.

“Engineering and Technology has agreed to use ACE recommendations, when applicable,” she said. The move is intended to permit alignment between a veteran’s technical background and the school’s curriculum, Wilson stressed. Credit will be granted for military training only when it is appropriate to do so, just like when a student transfers from another university, she added.

“Engineering and Technology programs have a long tradition of focusing on learning outcomes to prepare students for employment, graduate school, and lifelong learning,” noted Associate Dean Stephen Hundley. The programs are accredited by discipline-specific accreditors, and have widespread involvement of business and industry organizations in shaping the curriculum, explained Hundley. “We are excited to serve those students who have served the nation by providing an opportunity for veterans to start, continue, or complete their degrees in Engineering and Technology at IUPUI,” said Hundley.

“What we really want to do with this grant is create a model program and show other units on campus how it can work to benefit students and help them along the way,” Wilson said.
A bigger goal, she continued, is to disseminate this model across campus, statewide, and across the nation.

Operation Diploma was launched with a $5.8 million gift from Lilly Endowment, Inc., to empower Indiana’s postsecondary institutions and student veterans’ organizations to better assist service members and veterans entering college for the first time as well as those re-entering college after extended service or deployment.