By Dave Masaitis
In Motion Staff Writer
One of the toughest parts of leaving the military after a single term or a 20-year career is realizing that whatever you do next will involve starting over in some fashion. For those who transfer directly into a career related to their former military specialty, this means trying to integrate with a new set of peers, seniors and subordinates.
For the rest of veterans, vocational schools and universities are the pathway to a new career, but the daily processes and social attitudes on campuses, especially at the nation’s most elite universities, can seem foreign if not intimidating. It is no wonder that out of presently enrolled veterans across the country, only 16 percent are attending elite schools.
Enter The Posse Foundation’s Veterans Initiative. According to Ileana Casellas-Katz, Director of the Veterans Program, “Posse was established 27 years ago, to help place traditionally aged students from urban areas into top-tier universities. With the success show by our program in almost three decades, it only made sense to extend our program to our country’s newest non-traditional student population.”
What distinguishes Posse from other educational opportunities for veterans is the support they give and the team they send with the student. A veteran in Posse enters their first semester at a new school surrounded by other Posse Veterans, so they begin with a supportive social group, rather than having to take their first steps alone.
Posse also helps facilitate financial aid help for the veterans it selects, ensuring that tuition stays paid, even after the GI Bill runs out. With Posse students claiming more than $1 billion in scholarship opportunities and boasting a 90 percent graduation rate, it has established itself as an exceptionally viable and accessible opportunity for veterans.
The Posse Foundation has worked hard to place non-traditional students into elite colleges because it sees a social gap in local, state and national leadership. Elite universities have earned the stigma of only being accessible to the wealthy and to a point many leaders in business and government followed a family legacy into their university choice.
The Posse Veterans Initiative aims to blend the unique qualities and experiences that Veterans carry with them into the classrooms of top schools, in the hopes that this country will benefit in future decades from the diverse sharing of ideas between traditional and non-traditional students.
Writer’s Note: PBS made a short documentary about the Posse Veteran’s Initiative. It can be viewed at: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/when-veterans-enroll-at-elite-schools-theyre-not-just-students/