Transitioning from the military to college and combat-related trauma were some of the topics discussed at the first Veterans Awareness Seminar for ASU faculty and staff on the Downtown campus Monday.
The seminar — an effort to better understand and accommodate veteran students — launched Veterans Week at ASU, where 1,600 veteran students are registered.
With more than 40 people in attendance, Robert Stockman, director of the Phoenix Veterans Center, presented information from his standpoint as a veteran, student and licensed psychologist.
“This is about the veteran who becomes a student and is going through the academic process,” Stockman said. “We have to be careful to check our own biases when we’re dealing with veterans. When we hear the name ‘veteran’ a lot of people conjure up a lot of different things.”
Stockman said a correlation is all too often drawn between veterans and post-traumatic stress disorder or other negative attributes. Seventy percent of veterans do not suffer from PTSD, he added.
“In most cases there is less to be concerned about with regard to PTSD than there is to be considerate and aware of the more prevalent effects of the military culture and experience,” Stockman said.
However, Stockman and Christian Rauschenbach, program manager for veterans services at ASU, said they are aware that some cases of trauma are increasing and have different effects on individuals.
“We’re still being really careful,” Rauschenbach said. “We don’t want to give the impression that all veterans have PTSD.”
While distinctions were made between combat veterans and non-combat veterans, Stockman said there is no distinction between combat roles and non-combat roles for those who have been deployed to war zones.
“Everybody’s experiences are different,” Stockman said. “Nobody who goes into one of those war zones, one of those combat zones, regardless of what they did there, comes away from that experience unaffected. It does affect them, as you can imagine. Now that effect, again, can be positive or turned into a positive.”
For Pamela Stewart, a history professor at the Downtown campus, the veteran students she has encountered tend to be a little older, more conscientious, and more hard-working compared to other students.
“I am always thrilled to have veterans in my classes,” Stewart said. “I think it’s useful to have them among the student population more generally. They understand that you’re trying to present material in a way that can be useful.”
Following the grand opening of the Pat Tillman Veterans Center and the implementation of priority registration for veterans this year, ASU was recently ranked sixth in the top 100 “Best For Vets” four-year universities by Military Times EDGE magazine and was voted a military-friendly school by G.I. Jobs Magazine for three consecutive years.
Contact the reporter at kara.philp@asu.edu
