Helping those who help us

By Adam Gellert

As young adults graduate high school, some answer the call of duty and join our country’s armed forces. There are many programs to take care of these veterans after their tour of duty, one such program exists on the Estherville campus of Iowa Lakes Community College in the form of the Vet Center.

Vet Center Coordinator/Veteran Liaison and Air Force Chaplain Kent Schmidt says the Vet Center is meant to take care of student veterans and help them succeed.

“The last few years, our dean asked that we step up our efforts to recruit veterans, and take care of our veterans while they’re here,” he said.

Schmidt is also a veteran, having served on both active duty and in the National Guard.

“I was in the air force from 1987 until 1992,” Schmidt said. “I was a linguist, then I separated and used my GI benefits and went to seminary and became a chaplain. Then I was with the Air National Guard from 1997 to 2003, and then went back on active duty for 10 years. In 2013 I separated again from active duty and went back into the Air National Guard in Iowa, and since May of this year I’ve actually been in the Missouri National Guard.”

With his extensive military career and experience utilizing benefits and resources available to veterans, Schmidt is a valuable asset to the Vet Center at Iowa Lakes. While there are quite a few resources for student veterans, some of them aren’t readily apparent. Iowa Lakes sophomore Clayton Macguire, who is currently in the Iowa National Guard, is thankful to have a fellow veteran who knows all available Veteran Affairs benefits as the Vet Center Coordinator.

“The Vet Center has really opened my eyes to all these different things we can do,” Macguire said. “We know about benefits, but not everyone is well informed. Before Kent was here, there was guy who wasn’t a vet, he didn’t really know about every benefit available, he was mostly by the book. So just having that VA rep there and being knowledgable is nice. If you can see the door, all you gotta do is open it. Not very people know where to find the door, so being able to open the door, boom, all those possibilities, it just really helps.”

Macguire is also the president of the Student Veteran’s Committee, a brand new organization starting this year within the Vet Center. The committee is currently in the process of selecting a board of student veteran committee members. The committee seeks to make student veterans feel more at home and adjust to campus life.

“A lot of times civilians just don’t understand what we’ve gone through,” Macguire said. “So we’d like to make it easy to transfer in, and help them either go for the career they go to Iowa Lakes for, or go on to transfer to another school.”

One of Macguire’s main goals for the committee is retention of veterans and to get more student veterans involved with the Vet Center to receive the benefits available to them. Macguire would also like to help student veterans adjust to life on campus with camaraderie between different branches of student veterans through various activities. The Student Veteran Committee has the framework of this camaraderie with the Vet Center itself serving as a place for student veterans to socialize.

Another way the Vet Center provides support for student veterans is veteran mentors. These people are staff and faculty either with previous military experience or someone who is married to a person with military experience. Mentors are there to lend a sympathetic ear to student veterans and offer advice on dealing with their experiences as a veteran.

The Vet Center is also a place where student veterans can go to get any help with their benefits, as well as help reintegrating into student life. Schmidt knows that student veterans face unique challenges while readjusting to their new daily routines.

“A lot of them are a little older. A lot of them have a background that they may need a little help getting back into the flow of being a student at the college and integrating with other students,” Schmidt said. “It’s good for them to have that camaraderie and that support during that transition time.”

Schmidt is proud to say that the Vet Center at Iowa Lakes is doing a great job providing that support, and he’s not just saying that, the center has awards to back up his claim.

The Vet Center was recently awarded the Military Friendly Silver Award and is the only community college in Iowa to receive that distinction. Iowa Lakes is also rated third out of all colleges in Iowa, both private and public, in being military friendly. US Veterans Magazine has also nominated Iowa Lakes for the last two years as the “best of the best” as far as educational institutions that support veterans. The school was also nominated at the national level for the Freedom Award.

Even with all of these awards, Schmidt remains a big believer in what he calls, “continuous process improvement” which applies to the Vet Center as well.

“We’re very happy about the Military Friendly Silver Award,” Schmidt says. “The next step is to see if we can get the gold. One of the top 10 in our category for small community colleges nation-wide would probably follow that. We’re not just chasing awards though, we just see them as validation that we’re on the right track providing the support that our student veterans deserve.”