USM sees increase in military students

A check for $200 sat on Jeff Hammond’s desk at the University of Southern Mississippi on a mid-November morning. Earlier that day, a donor had brought the check to the retired Army major general’s office in the Center for Military Veterans, Service Members and Families on Morningside Drive. As part of a fundraising campaign, Hammond is seeking donations for veteran scholarships in his role as “special adviser to the university president on military veteran student affairs.”

Even with the GI Bill funding 36 months of college for many who served in the military, student veterans need more help financing a higher education.

“One thousand dollars creates a scholarship. One thousand dollars goes a long way,” Hammond said.

Since the center opened Oct. 22, 2014, it has created 14 scholarships for veteran students, and it has created an energetic buzz attracting more veterans and active-duty military students to Southern Miss. Hammond estimates the number of student veterans who come through his center at 1,200. This year, he calculates it is an increase of 174 enrolled students due to the center’s efforts.

In the 1,200 figure, Hammond includes veterans, their spouses and their children who are attending Southern Miss using GI Bill benefits.

Hammond’s rolling three-year plan for the center is to make Southern Miss the most military-friendly school in the nation. He suspects Southern Miss is already in the top 10, but he doesn’t have the proof just yet. His office, with a staff of four, sends recruiters to military bases in Texas, Florida and Georgia to get out the word to promote Southern Miss and to sell the image of USM as a place that cares about veterans.

The publicity efforts that began in 2013 to capture these military students are paying off. Southern Miss was named among "Top Schools" in the 2015 Military Advanced Education Guide to Colleges and Universities. The Military Order of the Purple Heart designated Southern Miss a "Purple Heart University" for its commitment to student veterans who are wounded in combat.

Hammond’s plan includes raising even more awareness about Southern Miss in the military community, creating more scholarships, providing professional development and help in finding jobs, and being the one-stop place on campus where student veterans can get problems solved.

“You are not just another number. You are the priority,” said Cody Abadie, 26, a Navy veteran who is now in his senior year at Southern Miss. He plans to graduate in the spring with a degree in anthropology and a history minor. His goal is to work for the U.S. Forest Service as an archaeologist.

Until recently, Abadie was vice president of the Southern Miss chapter of Student Veterans of America. The campus group has about 20 members and meets regularly at the center. Abadie, who served as an aviation ordnance man on board the U.S.S. John C. Stennis, said he feels more connected because of the chapter and because of the center.

“I like to stay close to other veterans. It’s my fraternity,” Abadie said. “We are looking out for our people, for our family, for our community.”

Hammond likes to point out that the military veterans his office recruits are not 17-year-old high-school students. “They have life experience.  Some have seen the horrors of war,” he said. “They are coming here to get their career going.”

He said most student veterans are interested in nursing, education or business careers.

“Guess what? USM is the top school in all three areas,” he said.

Hammond has special praise for the veterans who enlisted after Sept. 11, 2001. “They signed up after 9/11, knowing they would go to war. That’s courage that smacks of World War II,” he said. “They are not whiners. They are very humble young people.”

In 2013, the same year that Hammond started working on his plan, Southern Miss got news that U.S. Army wanted to close the ROTC program at Southern Miss for not creating enough commissioned officers. The Army has delayed the closure due to strong vocal opposition from state leaders, and the program was given a probation period. Hammond helped with this matter, but he says the threatened ROTC program and the creation of the Center for Military Veterans at Southern Miss are unrelated events. He said Southern Miss President Rodney Bennett deserves kudos for the saving the Army ROTC program.

“You can either sit down and feel sorry for yourself, or you can do something about it,” Hammond said. “Dr. Bennett did something about it.”

Hammond also said Bennett’s leadership is the key to the center’s success in attracting more veterans and in gaining a reputation as a military-friendly school.

One reason Hammond describes his three-year plan as “rolling” is because different issues emerge. On Nov. 10, he attended a pre-Veterans Day event at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Southern Miss. Four student veterans spoke to the gathering of retirees. What stunned Hammond was that three of the four talked about suicide among military veterans.

“This is their No. 1 concern,” Hammond said. He is now working with his staff on ways to incorporate this issue into the center’s ongoing agenda.

“We want to do more,” he said.

Online

Find out more about Southern Miss' Center for Military Veterans, Service Members and Families  at https://www.usm.edu/military-veterans.