Front and Center

“Studies cite veteran centers as being one of the most important aspect of a military-friendly institution for many reasons, including being a secure location where veterans can be with other veterans and study, rest, or simply have a few minutes to recuperate if they’re going through a tough time or having a bad day,” she says.

Bonner can relate. Born in Alabama, Bonner has called Greenville home most of her life. At age 22, she enlisted in the Air Force, went through basic training in Texas, did clinical training to become a medic at Andrews Air Force Base in Virginia and then was assigned to Seymour Johnson AFB near Goldsboro. She’s deployed to Turkey, Guam and Paraguay.

“I had always wanted to be in the military,” Bonner says. “I was lucky to have the freedom as an American, so I wanted to give back and thank my country for that.”

She left the Air Force in 2012, took courses at Pitt Community College, then enrolled at ECU in spring 2015. She’d learned about the university studies program and felt it fit her perfectly.

“That’s when I realized I could write my degree,” she says. She devised a degree program that will qualify her to work with veterans who are having post-traumatic stress disorder or other issues and help ease them back into a manageable lifestyle.

“I wasn’t done with my military lifestyle,” she says.

Morales grew up in a military family and saw the service as his best ticket out of a low-wage future and into one that could help others.

“It’s just being raised in that environment and that culture you just want put to a lot of work and a lot of focus to helping others,” says Morales, 33.

Morales served as a rifleman in the Marine Corps from 2001 to 2005, assigned to the Third Battalion, Third Marines and First Battalion, Third Marines. He was stationed at Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, and served one tour of duty in Fallujah, Iraq. He was honorably discharged as a corporal.

After taking some nursing classes, he decided to re-enlist. On a visit to a recruiting center, a Navy recruiter wouldn’t pay him much mind, but an Army recruiter did.

“He asked me if I wanted to jump out of a plane. I said, ‘Sure.’” So from 2007 to 2010, Morales served in a parachute infantry regiment at the famed 82nd Airborne at Fort Bragg. He was an airborne medic, served one tour in Baghdad and was honorably discharged as a sergeant.

Once out, he enrolled in Methodist College with an eye on becoming a physician assistant. But a professor motivated him to do more. So he applied to the Brody School of Medicine and not only was accepted but also received a Brody Scholarship, the school’s most prestigious.

Morales is interested in specializing in internal medicine and psychiatry and perhaps sub-specializing in emergency medicine.

As an undergraduate, he assisted with research into post-traumatic stress disorder. That experience makes him want to use his medical degree to return to military service work with veterans. He also wants to serve the Latino population.

He’s part of a first-year class in which approximately a tenth of its 80 students are veterans—including one from a European nation’s military and another whose wife is an Air Force physician. The percentage at most medical schools is in the single digits, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

“It seems ECU is an extremely veterans-friendly school,” Morales says. “ECU definitely looks at you as a whole person.” In addition, he says, having a VA health center within sight of the Brody Medical Sciences Building and major military installations in the region are pluses, too.

Bonner says what veterans experience as students isn’t all that different from what other students experience, but how they view it often is.

“Our age for one thing. We’re older, we have more life experiences. We have more responsibilities as an adult,” she says. “College in general is kind of geared toward traditional students.”

Froula, the granddaughter of a WWII veteran, the daughter of a Vietnam veteran and the cousin of an Iraq veteran, agrees.

“Not all (underclassmen) have a game plan in place for succeeding in coursework and preparing for life beyond college,” she says. “Not all have decided on a career path.

“In comparison, our student-veterans come to the university with the kinds of life experiences and life skills students typically don’t acquire from high school. They’ve had time to mature and develop more discipline and focus and arrive ready to apply it to their education and career path.”

A ‘military-friendly’ school

In the past couple of years, ECU has been named among the “best for vets”-and top school in North Carolina-by Military Times and as a “military-friendly school” by Victory Media.

ECU has approximately 1,400 military-affiliated students enrolled this fall, according to university figures. That total comprises active duty, veterans, dependents and ROTC students. In the past two years, the UNC system has seen a 13 percent jump in the number of people using military education benefits. This fall, those students numbered more than 6,000, according to system numbers.

“Recent national studies have proven that veteran students graduate at higher rates and with better GPAs than average traditional students at universities nationally,” says Joe Wescott, a veteran and executive director of the North Carolina State Approving Agency, which is responsible for approving educational and training programs for the GI Bill. “These students often show up on campus with a greater degree of maturity and are usually focused on their education and its importance to a successful career.”

“Eleven of North Carolina’s 16 public universities have opened campus veterans centers, all in the past three years. And most now have at least one full-time staff member to assist veterans in making the transition to campus life.

“Many of them have served multiple tours in war zones abroad and return with those experiences and memories and then enter a university setting that doesn’t have the same kind of disciplined, unit-building structures, which can be a different kind of challenge compared to those faced at war,” says Anna Froula, associate professor of film studies and faculty advisor of the Pirate Veterans Organization.

She says ECU’s veterans center, which opened last year in Brewster, is a vital ingredient in making the campus a good place for veterans to learn.

Former Marine recruits troops, vets to ECU

When Marine veteran Jeff Netznik ’80 ’02 was returning from his service in Vietnam, he was ordered to wear civilian clothes on his flight back to the States. But once at Camp Lejeune, he decided to take a class taught by an ECU professor.

“The faculty members used to drive down and sell books out of the trunk of their car,” says Netznik, who’s now associate director for military outreach in the Office of Continuing Studies. So he filled out a half- page form, paid $30 and got his book. “That was my first experience with ECU.”

Nearly surrounded by military installations, ECU is embracing its opportunity to be the school for active-duty service members as well as veterans.

“The Department of Defense is looking for degrees that will lead the service member to be a productive, more useful leader for the services and transition outside,” he says. “They’re looking for a degree program that provides the individual with a future.”

At ECU, Netznik says, faculty members are trained in what to look for in their student- veterans and how to help them find resources-and that, in turn, helps the university.

“The service members do well in the classroom, but they need help getting into the curriculum,”

he says. “Then they bring the success on themselves.

“It’s serving those that served,” he says. “One good alumnus is better than 25 billboards across the state.”

“The military outreach program is very helpful,” says Valerie Burgo ’10, who advises veterans and service members at Camp Lejeune near Jacksonville. She is the daughter of a former Marine who wound up in Jacksonville and, like many from the bases that surround Pitt County, chose ECU since it was close by.

“Many peers do migrate to ECU,” she says. “We’re about, what, and hour and twenty minutes?”

—Doug Boyd