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Student Veteran Deployment: What You Need to Know
HigherEdMilitary
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Power struggles are inherent to many personal and professional situations. However, one area where such conflicts should be avoided at all costs is in the college classroom.
Take, for instance, the issue of deployment. Clearly, a sizeable number of brave men and women who enter the service have the potential to be given orders to leave their current locations and prepare to travel to parts unknown. It's just part of the job and the commitment to putting on a uniform and serving our country.
Obviously, a service member can't object to deployment orders, but receiving such news can literally turn his life upside down. Does he have family commitments that need to be addressed? How are the finances holding out, and will he have to consider greater cost-of-living expenses? And finally, what if he is already enrolled in school?
Taking college courses while serving in the military is not for the timid or faint of heart. Making that kind of commitment can require hours of grueling work after all the weapons are polished and corners on the regulation cots have been tucked in so tightly that a quarter could bounce off them. However, many service members can and do choose this option, which can cause more than a few headaches when deployment orders are received.
"It took my husband 22 years to finish a bachelor's degree because of his work tempo and being on active duty," said Michele S. Spires, assistant vice president of learning evaluations for the American Council on Education (ACE). That would make Spires' husband 40 years old before he got his degree in Aviation and Engineering. His route to degree completion required a bit of plowing through the fox holes, as he charted a path through the general education classes completed at the Community College of the Air Force and finished up his degree at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. In fact, Spires said her husband actually attended five schools before he earned his Associate of Arts degree (AA).
Five schools mean five different lists of instructors and five different institutional philosophies of how to approach the policies of mandated reporting when a military learner must unexpectedly say he can't complete the course requirements on time. That is also when questions begin to crop up in the heads of the military learners, who may have been trained to fight in armed conflict, but might have no idea how to approach a civilian instructor to say his country comes first.
Moreover, a previous HigherEdMilitary article on the impact of deployment on military learners reported by Adam Fullerton, Ph.D., suggested that the issue of knowing a deployment is looming and not knowing whether the institution will be flexible to work with them can create a "lack of stability in the education process."
While emailing the instructor as early as possible can help to keep the communication channels open, there is also the issue of secrecy about being sent to a foreign region of the world where even the service member's immediate family will be unable to determine their whereabouts.
Dr. Dallas Kratzer, a senior fellow at the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education and senior associate with the Kentucky Commission on Military Affairs, adds that rarely does someone deploy with little or no notice, unless they are in a unique job. So, even though military students might not be sharing everything they need to with their professors, if they have a goal in mind to pass their classes, they need to keep their focus on getting course credit.
Kratzer, who is a retired Lt. Col., speaks from experience. He earned all of his degrees while serving in the U.S. Air Force for over 35 years. Additionally, on a deployment to Afghanistan in 2012-13, he taught two classes for the University of Louisville. Now he works as a consultant for the American Council on Education (ACE), evaluating the core curriculum of military training classes to determine if learners are eligible to receive college-equivalent course credits.
"Sometimes service members are so engaged in deployment that they forget: 'Hey, I'm a student,'" Dr. Kratzer said, adding that staff and faculty need to build a partnership with service members who face unique challenges on the journey to graduation.
According to Kratzer, it is the service member's responsibility to notify the instructor he will be leaving. His point is: how would the instructor know the student is a service member unless they self-identify? Moreover, how will the institution get that information in order to help the military learner make the necessary adjustments to get credit for completing their classes?
Obviously, schools that include military learners in their classrooms are already aware such scenarios can and do occur on an ongoing basis. And that means more attention is being given to the military learner to support these students during deployment and help them work out a realistic schedule for completing their outstanding assignments.
One way to enhance cooperation is to make sure the administration communicates their policies on deployment to the instructors. Michele pointed out that as many as 2,500 schools now have a policy in place to support military learners when there are challenges with deploying while attending college courses. Spires indicated that this data was published in a U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Voluntary Education Partnership Memorandum of Understanding (MOU).
Dr. Kratzer also stated that the instructor should be very clear and direct about their own expectations.
"It still goes back to the communication process between the faculty member and learner. Instructors need to be aware of service members and the challenges they face," he said.
"So, in the end, the learner has to find the right institution to meet their needs; that goes back on the learner owning their academic journey."
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