Grant leaves lasting benefits for veterans at Penn College

A federal grant that enhanced services for veteran students at Pennsylvania College of Technology recently ended, but its benefits will endure.

A Department of Education program, the three-year, $450,000 Centers of Excellence for Veteran Student Success grant aided the coordination of services geared to veteran students’ academic, financial, physical and social needs.

“All of the initiatives that we enacted during the grant period are going to be continued in one way or another,” said Chet Beaver, assistant director of student advocacy for veteran/military.
    
Actions spurred by the grant included hiring a veteran services specialist to help align veteran programming, creating a veteran education support team to eliminate barriers for veteran students, and increasing training for staff who provide mental health counseling to better equip them to understand the unique needs of veteran students.

Veteran-specific projects were developed focusing on first-year advising and the first-year experience course, deployment withdrawal and reinstatement, career services, and community- agency partnerships. The grant also led to a Joint Services Transcript program, which helps students earn college credit for military experience.

“We had a history of taking care of our veteran students for many years. However, with the process of writing our application for the grant and having our plan approved, we were able to analyze what we were doing, decide which programs and services our veteran population really needed, and most importantly, develop a detailed plan for making all of that happen,” Beaver said.

At the grant’s conclusion, the college named veteran services specialist Katie C. Burke to a new full-time position, coordinator of student advocacy/veteran support and prevention education, and placed all veteran services within the newly formed Student Advocacy office.

“Moving veteran services under the Student Advocacy office will allow for some of the advances that have been made in veteran advocacy to be used to benefit the greater student body,” Beaver explained.

Penn College was named the No. 1 school for veteran students in the Regional Colleges (North) classification in U.S. News & World Report’s 2025 Best Colleges rankings.

“After three years of the grant, I can say the biggest advance that we have made was the realization that it is not the responsibility of one person or one office to take care of our student veterans,” Beaver said. “Rather, it’s a community-wide effort to ensure we provide them with all the help they need to reach their academic goals.”

The college’s long-standing services and benefits available to military and veterans include a designated point of contact for counseling needs and career services, a separate student processing procedure with assistance from veterans, in-state tuition cost, waiver of tuition deposit, outreach program for veteran-student families, reduced fees at the Robert & Maureen Dunham Children’s Learning Center, and a central location to gather, collaborate and study: the Major General Fred F. Marty Veterans & Military Resource Center.

There are 170 student veterans, and another 90 military family members, enrolled at Penn College for the Fall 2024 semester.

For more information on resources available to veterans and military at Penn College, visit the web page.

Penn College is a national leader in applied technology education. Email the Admissions Office or call toll-free 800-367-9222.