November 10, 2025 • 37 mins
George Mason University proudly proclaims that we are All Together, Different. We are a school where non-traditional students are traditional students. And though they face unique challenges, these students bring important perspectives and experiences to our classrooms. Nowhere is this clearer than with our population of students connected to the military.
On this episode of Access to Excellence, Senior Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education and Professor of Psychology Keith Renshaw joins President Gregory Washington to discuss the role George Mason plays in providing service members, veterans, and their families the means to find community, purpose, and fulfillment beyond their military service.
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Trailblazers
in research, innovators in technology,and those who simply have a good story:
all make up the fabric thatis George Mason University,
where taking on the grand challengesthat face our students, graduates,
and higher education is ourmission and our passion.
Hosted by Mason PresidentGregory Washington,
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this is the Access to Excellence podcast.
It should go without sayingthat at George Mason,
everything starts with thestudents. As our website says,
we're All Together Different,
and that certainly describes the thousandsof people who come to study in our
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classrooms and labs.
George Mason studentshave often taken a less
traditional path to our doorstep.
Many have had challenges thatthey've dealt with in their lives,
or maybe they come to usfrom community college or are
late life learners comingfrom the workforce,
or as we're going to talk abouttoday, they come from the military.
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No matter what path theytook, non-traditional
students are traditional studentsat George Mason and with our guest
today,
we're going to take a look at howGeorge Mason works to open the doors for
them.
Keith Renshaw is George MasonUniversity's senior associate
provost for undergraduate educationand a professor of psychology
(01:31):
in the College of Humanitiesand Social Sciences. Actually,
he probably would prefer I putthe professor first..
He specializes in anxiety, stress, trauma,
and interpersonal relationships withparticular interest in the experiences
of service members andtheir families. Keith,
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welcome to the show.
Thank you very much. Happy to be here.
So you have an interesting path'cause you're non-military, correct?
That is correct. I'm non-military.
So how did you first get involvedin the veteran community?
That's, yeah, it's somethinga lot of people ask me,
because a lot of timesthey assume I, I did serve.
My field within psychologyis clinical psychology,
(02:13):
and with that degree I had to doa year-long clinical internship,
which I did at a VAhospital. Shortly after that,
I got my first tenure track job, uh,and that was at the University of Utah,
and it was in, uh, 2005.
And so we were in the height ofdeployments to Iraq and Afghanistan,
and you couldn't get away from allthe reports about the impact of those
deployments on the, theservice members and,
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and in particular on their families.Um, and also on the folks who had,
for instance,
been in the National Guard and werebeing called up to deploy for 12,
15 months at a time. And I foundmyself really moved by those reports,
and I wanted to do something. Iknew that myself, I wouldn't, uh,
volunteer for the military.It just wasn't in me.
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And I had this overwhelming respect andalmost awe for the people who would,
and I wanted to find a way touse my own training to help.
So one thing I considered was,uh, something called Give an Hour.
This was a program back then that allowedyou to donate sort of an hour of free
therapy, uh, a week to, tosomebody in the population.
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But as I thought about it,it felt too transient to me,
and I wanted to do somethingthat would be more sustainable.
So what I did was tried to pivotmy entire research program,
which up to that point had reallyfocused on anxiety disorders and adult
relationships, to look at stress, trauma,
and anxiety in the context ofrelationships within the military. Uh,
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and so through a series of connections,
I started partnering up with the UtahNational Guard and trying to find ways to
design research studies to addressproblems they were seeing so that not only
would I be able to sort of be givingback in some way through my work,
I would be able to be directly impactingissues they were seeing and trying to
help them form recommendations.And, and honestly,
(04:02):
that work sort of launchedmy entire research career,
which led me here toGeorge Mason in, in 2009.
I guess you had early life experienceswith veterans that helped shape
your current thinking andinvolvement. Is, is that accurate?
I would say that is accurate. Um,
my kids would object to your using earlylife experiences given that I was in my
twenties. But yes, I, that's, that'sthe way I would think about it.
(04:25):
So, so talk to me a little bit aboutwhat some of those experiences were.
What kinds of things did you see thatkind of moved you in this direction?
So when I was at the VAhospital working with,
with some of the veterans at the time,uh, I, I was at that hospital in 2001,
so I was there on 9/11and, and, and after.
And so I was seeing a lot of the veteranswho were coming from the Vietnam era
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and also from sort of the firstGulf War era. And what I saw,
especially in the Vietnam eraveterans, well actually in,
in really in both populations,
was just how disrupted their relationshipshad been after they came back.
And that was a lot in terms of trying tounderstand what they were experiencing
now that they were done, um, and,and how to explain that to others,
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or how they couldn't explain that toothers. And I also saw just how, um,
disrupted their sense of purpose hadbecome, and I saw this throughout,
there's this incredible sense of,
of mission and purpose that these folkswere experiencing while they were part
of the military. And when they left,
they were often sort of graspingfor some element of that afterward
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that they just couldn't recreate.
And that was really causing thema lot of distress. And so I,
I found myself wanting to find waysto think about both of those elements.
How could I do things that might impacttheir relationships and how might
I also be able to think abouthelping them, uh, regain and,
and find that purposeoutside of the military, uh,
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while also sort of helping themin the traditional, you know,
sort of psychological sense as I wasworking with them in therapy and whatnot.
In 2020,
you helped lead the formationand launch of the Military
Veterans and Families Initiativeat George Mason, the MVFI.
Or I like to say M-V-Fi, you know?
(06:19):
What was the inspirationbehind the effort?
So when I got here over time,
I started to get connected with otherpeople at the university who also did
something that touched on the servicemember, veteran family population. Um,
at first it was researchers, peoplewould, would introduce me to, you know,
they'd say, "oh, somebody else isdoing research with this group,
you should really meet them." And so Iwould find out about this wide range of
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research we had going on here at theuniversity from the kinds of things that I
do, looking at sort offamily adjustment, um,
up through battlefield technology tosort of classified things people couldn't
tell me about, you know, andall, all sorts of things. And,
and if you look really at our, I,I know you know this, you know,
if you look at our research portfolio, uh,
over 50% of our federally fundedprojects come from the DOD over the past
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several years.
Yep, that is true.
So we have just an incredible rangeYeah, pf, of, of research there.
But I also met folks whoare working with students.
We had an Office of Military Services, uh,
that started here under theleadership of Jennifer Connors,
who's still their director nowwith her associate director,
Ryan Barnett and some other staff.
They serve the just huge number ofstudents we have here at George Mason.
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When we started this work,
about 10% of our student bodyself-identified as service member,
veteran or family. Um,we're now up to almost 14%.
We have well over 5,000 students,um, who are in this, this group.
And so that really just sort of spoketo us as we all sort of talked to each
other, we're like, wow,there's a lot going on here.
But what I think really kicked us offto think about what we're trying to do
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with MVFI is seeing allof the other ways that we
touched on this population that wasembedded in our education and research
missions. So a couple of examples: I learned about the M-Vets Clinic. (07:54):
undefined
This is a clinic that runsthrough our law school. Every,
every law school has theirthird year law students,
they've gotta get practical experience.
The way our law school does it is to givefree services to veterans with certain
types of legal issues. Andthe students sit first chair,
and then there's a barred faculty memberwho sits, um, second chair with them.
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And so under the leadershipof Tim MacArthur,
that group has been servingveterans for years at this point.
And then I also foundthat we had this, uh,
incredible Veterans in the Arts programthat's actually a nationally recognized
research program led by Niyati Dhokai inour College of Visual Performing Arts,
where in the context of research on howart impacts the service member, veteran,
family community, um,
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they are serving thousands of veteransthrough free workshops. They come in,
they do the workshops, and they're,we're talking painting, photography.
They're closing on 20,000 folks thatthey've served over the past decade
or so in that program.
And so we just had these unique types ofways that we serve veterans that I did
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not see at other universities.
And so when we all gottogether and started talking,
we wanted to find a way to connect these,
because the two thingswe realized were, one,
a lot of people didn't know about thisunless you knew where to look outside the
university. And two,
a lot of even the people doing theseefforts didn't know each other and didn't
know about the efforts. And sowe wanted to connect them. Um,
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and that was really theinspiration behind the,
the effort was to try toconnect the programs, grow them,
and really raise the visibility becausewe thought we should be shouting this
from the rooftop so that people know.
So really you see this more as amatchmaking kind of framework. It's,
is that right?
It started as that, yes.
Okay. Well talk about whatspecific services you offer,
and then let's talk aboutsome of the successes.
(09:40):
Yeah, sounds good. So, soin addition to those, we,
we've seen some other growth. Anotherreally interesting program we had, um,
was something calledEducate the Educators.
So back in the sort of mid 2010s,
Michelle Obama and Jill Biden hada whole initiative around sort of
recognizing all thatmilitary service members and,
and veterans and families were doing.
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And one component of that wascalled Educate the Educators.
They wanted to train teachers in how toknow the challenges and the resources
available to military children.
And so Jill Biden actually came to ourcampus to announce the sort of initiative
because we were already doing thework. Uh, Jennifer Drake Patrick,
a faculty member in our College ofEducation and Human Development had
developed,
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Educate the Educators modules that werebeing embedded into our curriculum for
all future teachers within our Collegeof Education and Human Development.
So we were able to sort of really put aspotlight on that and help that shine.
That is now actuallyprofessional education that is available to all teachers
from preschool up through 12th gradethroughout the state of Virginia.
No, that's pretty cool.
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I think people underestimate whatyoung people who were in military,
look, I was a young person in a militaryfamily and then, and served myself.
As a young person,
one of the things Ioftentimes remember is that
you would establish friendships, andyour friendships were in, you know,
two to four year cycles. Right. You,
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you establish these friendshipsand then the next thing you know,
you're off to anotherduty station and you would
essentially start all over.
And these moves didn't come at,you know, the opportune time.
And, and I remember, you know, justwhen life was getting good for me,
...
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.
Trust, when things were gettingreally good, there was a move.
Boom, yeah.
And you start all over, right? And,
and so I think it probably affectsthose young people relative to
how they maintain andengage relationships.
Because everything is temporary, right?
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I believe I have fewer lifelongrelationships, right, because
of it. I've had a couple ofrelationships endure everything.
But I can see where it's,where it can be a problem.
Yeah. You're so spot on with that. And,
and this is really one of the thingsthat grabbed us when we started this work
and, and why it's not justmilitary veterans, right, or service member veterans.
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And it's,
it's military veterans and familiesbecause the impact is so huge and,
and honestly, when you meet thefamilies, right. Um, and this,
this was part of what reallyhit me in my early work,
the amount of resilience andcommitment that they have,
but they don't necessarilyget recognized, right.
When they're walking through the airport,people aren't applauding for them,
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right, you know, I mean...
People don't say, thankyou for your service.
No, they don't. Right. And,and boy, they should! And,
and one of the things that,
that we've actually been able to do thatreally speaks exactly to what you were
just talking about, uh, here at GeorgeMason, after we've started the MVFI, um,
Jennifer Drake Patrick,that same faculty member,
has also recently stood up with somesupport from us and some philanthropic
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donations we've gotten in,has been able to stand up, um,
Student Ambassador days. Sohigh schools in this area,
most of 'em have StudentAmbassador Programs.
These are students who are sort of chargedwith helping new students transition
in Right. And, and helpthem out. Obviously,
the military children are a hugepiece of that part. Yeah. Right.
You know what I mean?
Without question. Especially here.
Yeah. And so, um, andthey're coming in at all,
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at all times of the yearand everything else.
And so what we do now is wehost those students. We brought,
we bring students here to campus.
They have a day on campus with our facultyand our students sort of training up
in different ways to do this work andlearning specifically about some of the
challenges that the military childrenhave and getting ready to work with them.
And so we've been able to dothat work and kind of amplify it.
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Started with one day with Fairfax, andnow we have more than we can handle. Um,
we got Prince William wanting to come in.We got Arlington, Alexandria, Loudoun,
and, and so now we're, we're out theretrying to find some more funds to,
to support that work because we've gotmore demand than we can supply. Um,
so a another one that, that I'm reallyexcited by to, to see how it's come is,
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was a success both in starting somethingnew and then connecting programs.
We took that M-Vets model and we have, uh,
what's called the Center for CommunityMental Health here at George Mason,
operates out the College ofHumanities and Social Sciences.
It's led by Robyn Mehlenbeck.
And they provide therapy andassessment to the community through
clinical psychology students,social work students,
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and counseling students whoare all in graduate programs,
training to be therapists andassessors and whatnot, um, in their,
in their future life. So it's a similarmodel to the M-Vets program. Um,
there is a cost associated with that.
They're one of the lowest cost thingsin the area, but there's still a cost.
And we've actually been able to, again,
raise philanthropic funds to supportthe provision of services free to
veterans and now their families as well.
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So any veteran or family in the areawho needs therap,y needs assessment can
come to our clinic and can getthat free through that service.
We actually now have a second fund.
Wow. Do we, do we advertise that?Is that something that's known?
We do.
We actually partner with the Departmentof Veteran Services here in Virginia to
make sure that they know.
And so we actually sometimes havepeople referred from Richmond, Roanoke,
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you know, to, to come up forassessments in particular, um,
because those are hard to get andextremely expensive. A thorough, you know,
psychological assessment.
The community is gonna cost youanywhere from three to $5,000.
And they can get that free.
They can get that free.
Outstanding. That's amazing.
On the student side, um,
we have actually started to work andconnect a lot of our different student
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offices around campus to the Office ofMilitary Services through this work so
that everybody's kind of on the same page.
So we now have a monthly group that meets,
and we have representatives fromthe Office of Military Services,
Registrar's office, financialaid, Student Accounts,
Counseling and Psychological Services,um, Center for Community Mental Health.
I'm gonna forget some...CareerServices...so that everybody knows the different
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things that are going on. Andeverybody also knows, hey,
if you get a veteran coming in,
there might be special servicesavailable to them. Um, and, uh,
and so we've been able to stand thatup. We now are just about to launch,
I think this is now confirmed (15:50):
in Fall '26 we are for the first time,
gonna be able to evaluate veteransprior educational experiences
in the military, through theirjoint services transcript,
for credit here at George Mason.
And we have not been able to dothat for years just because it's,
it's kind of a morass.
But through the work of this group andthrough some advocacy from people in this
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group, um,
we've gotten to the point now where ourtransfer credit evaluation team has put
some technology in place. And we are,we are test running it now. And so,
so far all looks good.
And so we think that we're gonna be ableto launch that starting Fall '26, um,
where people are getting, uh, muchmore credit for their prior service.
Because one, one of the things that I saw,
at least in my time working with folks,is not only the incredible purpose and,
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and the incredible things that servicemembers master during their time,
but just how much of that doesn'tshow up on any kind of resume or
transcript except for thisjoint services transcript.
And so that is critical to being able tohelp them get toward that degree by not
making them repeat things that theyclearly have mastered in the past.
(16:55):
Oh, that's amazing. So, and,and that will then, will,
it should equal more courses being--
Credited...
--Being awarded to students.
Right.
So that they're not basically repeatingthe same thing that they already know.
Outstanding, outstanding. This MilitaryVeterans and Families Initiative,
how does it uphold Mason'svalues as an institution?
(17:16):
Yeah, in my mind, it's, it's almostthe sort of epitome of the values.
And the reason I say that is because thiswhole thing is about bringing together
inclusivity and access for students andsupporting those students with what they
need to get to their next step.
With the incredible researchenterprise that we have here,
and the expertise that we havewith serving the community
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and being a, a place where weare, um, we are a public good,
right? We are a state entity, andwe are here serving the state.
We're doing that by serving thecommunity members. We're in one of the,
you know, most veteran-rich,service member-rich,
family-rich areas of the country.
And we have all of these servicesthat are training our students, um,
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that are accomplishing research whilealso delivering services directly to that
population in our region. In addition,
we are one of the biggest producersof talent in the region, in the state.
And we know that in our region,
we have a number of employers who arenot only looking for great talent,
but they have specific recruitinginitiatives around veterans.
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And so we are supplying thattalent basically by bringing these things together.
So we're able to marry the studentservices with the research mission,
with the community service missionof our university. So, to me,
it really sort of represents everything.
And it also is bringing in a whole set of,
of folks who have had a different lifeexperience than those who haven't been in
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the military.
You know, what you call that?
I think I know what you're gonna say.
You know what we call that here?, we call that diversity.
And that's a part of the piecethat's always missing from the
discussions that we have on this topic.
You are right.
That's clear. We don't run from it.
Nope.
But I think the broader public missesthat we see this as part of the
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diversity, the rich tapestry of diversitythat we bring to this community,
and that we work to enhance,you know, we work to engage,
and we work to incorporate in termsof what George Mason is all about.
And that kind of experience benefitsnot just the service members,
the veterans and their families,
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benefits our students fromseeing different perspectives, different backgrounds.
I mean, you've got people who are cominghere who lived all over the world,
seeing all kinds of things, um,
and that they're bringingthat into our classrooms.
Yeah. I had a dinner last night with agroup of students, and in that group,
you know, we had former military students,and they were older than, you know,
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the traditional students in the group,
and they brought a different setof life experiences to discussion.
They're in the same classes. Theyhave the same engagement. Uh, they,
they work in the same groups. But theybring a different set of experiences.
And that is valuable to otheryoung people who are really,
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for lack of a better way of sayingthis, figuring themselves out.
That's Right.
A 2019- 2020 survey from the National
Center on Education Statisticsstated that veterans
represent 3.7% of allundergraduate students
in the US. Would you say thatthis data has changed since then?
(20:40):
I, yeah.
So we don't have any comprehensivestudies like that that they've done since
that I have seen what we're seeingin some of the sort of, you know,
sampling type studies, is that, thatthat number seems to be going up right,
might be inching closerto 5%. Now, in addition,
I think it's important to layer on topof that the veteran connected folks and
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the military connected folks, thinkingabout the kids, thinking about the,
the spouses, right, 'cause militaryspouses, I, I just wanna sort of note,
they often get left out ofthe conversation, you know,
but they have their own issues withyou, you mentioned it before, right,
you know, just like the kids aremoving every one to two to four years.
So are the spouses.
And so stringing together aset of educational or work experiences is difficult.
(21:25):
So, so I think that thatnumber is inching up. Um,
it's certainly higherhere at George Mason.
We're higher than those statistics.Is that what you would say?
For sure. Yeah. We're definitelyhigher than that on the veteran side.
And then when you layer on top of that,the, um, the sort of, we, we also have,
you know, we've gotactive duty and, you know,
guard reserve who are here as well. Andthen we've got, you know, a very robust,
(21:46):
uh, enrollment of, ofdependents and spouses.
What are some of the unique experiencesthat veterans bring to the classroom?
You know, I think all kinds ofthings, right? So, on the one hand,
you've got a set of folks who have oftenhad pretty global experiences depending
on where they've been deployed.And, and when I say deployed,
I don't mean combat zones.I mean, you know, they,
(22:07):
sometimes they're going off and doingother types of missions. Also every,
you know, one to two to three, four years,there are changes of station, right?
And so sometimes they're in Germany orsometimes they're over in Korea, and,
and, and so they're bringingall of that life experience in.
But they're also bringing theexperience of being part of this
broader mission, you know, this,
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this broader group with afairly singular mission.
And that kind of experience of beinga piece of a team to a level at
which most people haven't experienced,I, I think is just invaluable, right?
To hear about and, and, and to see.
And then they've got just a world oflogistical experience. You've got,
you've got some, you know, veterans whoare coming in having managed, you know,
(22:51):
millions of dollars of equipment,hundreds of other--right, you know,
service members beingresponsible for their lives. And,
and then they're walking intothe classroom, right. You know,
and sitting down and making a presentationwith other groups that that's gonna
change the way they think about some ofthe issues we're talking about in the
classroom. Um,
that's gonna layer on differentexperiences with other cultures as well,
(23:13):
you know, a lot of folks areout there interacting with,
with people all over the world. Right.Right. And having to kinda learn that.
It's interesting when you juxtapose thatyou may have been serving in theater in
a country,
and then you are now in the classroominteracting with students from
that country. Right?
Absolutely. Especially here. Yeah.
(23:34):
Oh, yeah. Without question.
What are some of the challenges orbarriers veterans face when returning to
school?
So one, I think, is a logistical one,
which is being able to sort of getcredit for some of the experiences and
training they have had that maps reallyclosely onto the courses that they're
now being told they have to take becausethey don't have a neat transcript that
(23:54):
shows it. Um, so that, that's, that'sa biggie. I think the, you know,
I don't know if cultureshock is the right word, but,
but having to sort of transition fromthe world they've been in to a classroom
setting can often be challenging. Itcan often be challenging, I think,
even from things as simple as a vagueassignment that is vague on purpose,
you know,
sometimes we give our students assignmentswhere part of the assignment is
(24:17):
figuring out, right, what they need to do.
Sometimes these are folks who are veryused to being told precisely what they
need to do. I had one student I workedwith who's a doctoral student, and, um,
and his phrase was always like,what's the target? Right? What, what,
what do I need to hit? Right.And I was like, unfortunately,
you gotta figure out that target.Right. You know, that that's part of it.
Part of it is findingit. Um, and so, you know,
(24:37):
so we would have these kindof back and forths, but,
but I'm gonna layer on top of all of that.
I think one thing thatdoesn't get enough attention,
which is often the search forpurpose and mission, right?
I think what we're seeing now is a realstruggle in that transition period from
service to veteran, um,
where you go from having this very clear
(24:59):
mission and,
and you're part of an entire groupthat is 100% devoted to that mission,
and then you step out, it's allkind of open. You know, what now?
And I think that sometimes that's a,
that's a bigger struggle thanwe realize sort of as as,
as folks are trying to figureout, what am I doing next?
How do we layer on that sense of purpose,that sense of mission with that work?
(25:21):
MVFI's mission of providing criticalsupport to military veterans,
and family extends to developingcurricula and learning
opportunities for ournon-military connected students to
understand the uniqueneeds and experiences of veterans and their families.
Right. Can you talk about some of thesehands-on opportunities for our students?
(25:43):
I'm so glad you asked aboutthat. So, you know, we,
we have those educate the educatormodules, right, right. Which will,
which sort of train future teachers.
We use that as a springboard to createa similar set of modules for healthcare
programs. So partnered up witha, with a nonprofit and a, a,
a medical doctor who had been in theservice and created a set of modules that
trained folks in healthcareabout different sorts of conditions they might see.
(26:07):
And again, different resourcesavailable to veterans. Um,
because what folks don't realize is themajority of veterans are getting their
care outside the VA system. Alot of times people think, oh,
I'm not gonna see it.Well, you are, right?
And especially if you're goinggraduate and practice in this region,
you're absolutely going to see it.So we wanna prepare those students.
(26:27):
Some of the other interestingthings we've been able to do,
and this is what I want, whatI hope to grow in the future,
is to be able to connect studentsin particular classes with either
veteran serving organizations,
nonprofits in the area thathave particular needs, um,
or other sorts of efforts. And so, I'llgive a couple of examples. I was, uh,
talking to somebody who was,uh, running kind of a nonprofit,
(26:50):
and they were like, you know,
we just don't have time to build out ourwebsite to sort of get our, you know,
our, our marketing out there,et cetera. And I said, well,
let me look around and turns out,and we have, not surprisingly,
a set of communication classesthat that's what they do.
And they're always on the lookoutfor clients as sort of practice
for the students to gethands-on training that semester,
(27:11):
so I was able to hook them up.
And the students got their experiencewhile helping this nonprofit
get their website off the ground.
And on the way the students also got tosort of see some of the issues that the
service member,
veteran family community is dealingwith because of the content of what they
were working on.
We had a partnership with the Departmentof Veteran Services to, um, help run,
(27:35):
uh, a suicide prevention programthat they do that's called, uh,
Virginia's "Identify, Screen,and Refer." And they needed a,
a logo so that they could give peoplesomething that would show that they had
completed a certain type of training.Well, we were able to connect them with a,
a summer class in graphic design here,
and the students as part of theirfinal projects, each submitted designs,
(27:58):
and then the,
all the final designs were sent tothe Department of Veteran Services,
and they selected a winner,
and then that student was ableto come down and talk about it.
Turns out it was a military kid. And inthe middle of his presentation, the, uh,
Commissioner of, uh, VeteranServices was there, stood up, uh,
came up and gave him a military coinfor doing such a great job. It was,
(28:19):
it was just a really, really coolmoment for one of our students. Yeah.
Outstanding.
So why is it important for studentsto learn about the unique needs of
military veterans and theirfamilies, other students?
Yeah. I, I see it as, as one:
part of our broader approachto, as you said before, right?
From the perspective of diversity,recognizing we live in a, you know,
(28:44):
global and diverse world.
And our students need to beprepared for that in all aspects.
Not just in one aspect of diversity,not in two or three aspects,
but all aspects. This isanother one. In addition,
a lot of our students are going out thereand doing work that is where they're
gonna be interacting with folks.And, and guess what?,
a huge percentage of our populationis military or veteran connected.
(29:07):
So developing competence to work withthat group is sort of critical to success.
If you're in a service field, you needto be prepared for that. And just,
if you're gonna be a person whointeracts with other colleagues,
you should be preparedfor that to some degree.
And so I see it as another piece of whatwe are delivering to our students in
(29:27):
terms of training them to be prepared toengage with the full range of diversity
they're gonna experiencewhen they leave this place.
Especially if you stay in this area.
Absolutely.
Right? Which more than70% of our students do.
You stay in this area for a job,
it's a high probability you're gonnadeal with people from the military.
(29:50):
For sure.
And so you need to have an understandingor even some life experiences where
you've engaged with folk in the classroomand others. That's right. So you,
you're an accomplishedprofessor here at George Mason,
and you've gotten multiple teachingawards. Right. And, you know,
I always would envy you folk overin psychology because, you know,
everything you do is sorelatable. Yeah.,
(30:10):
which made it easierto win teaching awards.
, I feel like you're,
I feel like you're knockingdown my award a little bit.
Make it easier, because, you know,
you deal with the human conditionand everybody has a dog in the hunt.
And they don't necessarily have thatwith differential equations., I,
I get it.. Um,
but how have your experienceswith the military community
(30:34):
impacted your approach to teaching?
It's a, it's a great question. I'mgonna sort of put two elements to it.
One is sort of my broaderexperiences, right?
It's just kind of opened my eyes to a
very particular slice of diversity thatI would not have otherwise been aware
of. And so that then makesme realize in my teaching,
like I have to realize peoplein my classroom might have had
(30:58):
any range of experiences thatI'm not aware of. You know,
when I started out earlyon in my teaching career,
a lot of what I did reliedon the relatability, right, of the material. And, um,
you can make that be prettyfun. I realized, you know,
over time that some ofwhat I was making fun, um,
(31:18):
I wasn't making fun of it,but I was making fun with it.
But that was probably prettypersonal to a student in my class,
and I didn't realize it. And so Iwas able to sort of shift my, as, as,
as I had some more of theseexperiences, in particular,
some of the experienceswith the military folks,
I was able to start to shift theway that I delivered my material,
even to be a little bit more sensitiveto that, I think, and to be, um,
(31:40):
a little bit more aware.
It also opened my eyes to the importanceof exposing people to different
perspectives in ways ofthinking. And this one,
I'll get a little more personal in, inthis region, right? You make friends,
right? You know, you meet people,um, who are coming in. And, um,
number of years ago as I was sort ofstarting in this work, uh, you know,
we had a military familykind of move into the,
(32:01):
the neighborhood and kids were the sameage, you know, and everything else.
So we, we spent a lot of time togetherand I ended up getting into some sort of
in-depth conversations with theirfather who was a, a military member.
And, and that really led to this kind ofwhat now is probably going on almost 10
years of occasionally sort ofstepping aside and having really deep
(32:22):
conversations about issues wherewe have differing perspectives and
trying to understand each other.
And that has kind of formed the basisfor how I think about what we need to be
teaching all of our students,
because we have far toolittle of people with from
different perspectives tryingto engage with each other,
(32:43):
to understand each other,
as opposed to put each other down orshut each other down. And in fact,
that that really is driving some of thework I'm now doing in my current role
in, in sort of senior associateprovost for undergrad ed,
trying to think about how do we fosterthese types of experiences in our
students.
He came with me actually to an eventwe had last year pre-election that we
(33:06):
hosted through our Office of CommunityEngagement and Civic Learning.
And the Schar School sent overJennifer Victor and Lucas Núñez,
and there was this whole sort of, uh,
engagement of students and staff andfaculty around particular issues. Um,
and it was all fact-basedand sort of respectful,
but trying to sort of think aboutdifferent sides of the same issue and,
you know, and, and wherepeople were coming from.
(33:28):
So seeing how that can happen andhow intentional that has to be,
particularly now, um,
has really shaped my thinking abouthow to teach in a way that makes people
confront other ideas from aperspective of learning more about it.
Not just shooting it down.
As someone with extensive experienceat this intersection of the
(33:53):
military community and higher ed,
what would you say is one wayhigher ed can improve themselves in,
in terms of the support of veterans,the military and their families?
I would love to see higher ed pushourselves in thinking about the
military veteran family communitywithin diversity work. As you said,
(34:14):
you know, I mean, thisis, this is work that,
that has to happen because it'swho our student body is, right?
So how do we make sure it's robust sothat it's capturing the totality of what
we mean by diversity? So I would loveto see us incorporate this, you know,
the sort of understanding of thepopulation and understanding the
totality of what the, thepopulation goes through.
(34:36):
Because I think a lot of times whenpeople say, oh yeah, you know, I mean,
I wanna make sure I knowabout the military veteran community so that I know how
to recognize when somebody's got PTSD.And it's like, that's not the totality,
right? I mean, you know, that is,
that is such a small piece of thingsthat I think I'm really glad we have
awareness of it, but I think it's kindof overtaken and overshadowed the, the,
(34:57):
the sort of totality of experience.Let's recognize the, the benefits,
let's recognize the rich sort ofexperience that folks are bringing to the
table. Um,
and let's start embeddingthat in trainings for faculty and staff so that we're
aware of it and we can actuallynot only serve our students better,
but leverage thatexperience to benefit all of
(35:19):
our students more. And within that work,
my real hope is that we don'tjust stay focused on veterans
only, but we really broaden outto think about military spouses,
military children,
and the entirety of the family becausethat whole group brings a set of
experiences to the table that we needto recognize and, and acknowledge.
(35:42):
That is good stuff.
So what encourages you to continueworking with and advocating
for the veteran community?
Every now and again, with thisveteran opportunities group,
some sort of emergent issue pops up.
And because that group is functioningso well together and, and so tight,
we're able to sort of problem solve it.
(36:03):
And we help a student who is aboutto lose their benefits, right?
Or who is about to have to stopout because their benefits ended,
and we figure out a way to keep them inand get them over the finish line. When,
when I see those kindsof things, I get excited.
And when I see the kinds ofthings we've been able to do,
standing up the Student Ambassador Days,
starting these services at Center forCommunity Mental Health for the folks, um,
(36:25):
continuing the serviceswe're doing through M-Vets.
When I see those kind of impacts,
as much as this is all done right nowwith just donated time and effort from
folks across the university,
it keeps you going and itmakes you wanna keep doing it.
Outstanding. Outstanding. Well,we really, really appreciate you,
and we appreciate the work you're doingfor our students and for our veterans
(36:45):
and their families.
There you go. There you go. Well,I appreciate the opportunity.
Outstanding. Well, we're gonnahave to leave it there. Keith,
thank you for joining us and for yourhard work in helping George Mason
University students succeed. I am GeorgeMason president Gregory Washington.
Thanks for listening, and tune in nexttime for more conversations that show why
(37:09):
we are All Together, Different.
If you like what youheard on this podcast,
go to podcast.gmu.edu formore of Gregory Washington's
conversations with thethought leaders, experts,
and educators who take on the grandchallenges facing our students, graduates,
and higher education.That's podcast.gmu.edu.
Trailblazers
in research, innovators in technology,and those who simply have a good story:
all make up the fabric thatis George Mason University,
where taking on the grand challengesthat face our students, graduates,
and higher education is ourmission and our passion.
Hosted by Mason PresidentGregory Washington,
(00:21):
this is the Access to Excellence podcast.
It should go without sayingthat at George Mason,
everything starts with thestudents. As our website says,
we're All Together Different,
and that certainly describes the thousandsof people who come to study in our
(00:42):
classrooms and labs.
George Mason studentshave often taken a less
traditional path to our doorstep.
Many have had challenges thatthey've dealt with in their lives,
or maybe they come to usfrom community college or are
late life learners comingfrom the workforce,
or as we're going to talk abouttoday, they come from the military.
(01:06):
No matter what path theytook, non-traditional
students are traditional studentsat George Mason and with our guest
today,
we're going to take a look at howGeorge Mason works to open the doors for
them.
Keith Renshaw is George MasonUniversity's senior associate
provost for undergraduate educationand a professor of psychology
(01:31):
in the College of Humanitiesand Social Sciences. Actually,
he probably would prefer I putthe professor first.
He specializes in anxiety, stress, trauma,
and interpersonal relationships withparticular interest in the experiences
of service members andtheir families. Keith,
(01:52):
welcome to the show.
Thank you very much. Happy to be here.
So you have an interesting path'cause you're non-military, correct?
That is correct. I'm non-military.
So how did you first get involvedin the veteran community?
That's, yeah, it's somethinga lot of people ask me,
because a lot of timesthey assume I, I did serve.
My field within psychologyis clinical psychology,
(02:13):
and with that degree I had to doa year-long clinical internship,
which I did at a VAhospital. Shortly after that,
I got my first tenure track job, uh,and that was at the University of Utah,
and it was in, uh, 2005.
And so we were in the height ofdeployments to Iraq and Afghanistan,
and you couldn't get away from allthe reports about the impact of those
deployments on the, theservice members and,
(02:35):
and in particular on their families.Um, and also on the folks who had,
for instance,
been in the National Guard and werebeing called up to deploy for 12,
15 months at a time. And I foundmyself really moved by those reports,
and I wanted to do something. Iknew that myself, I wouldn't, uh,
volunteer for the military.It just wasn't in me.
(02:57):
And I had this overwhelming respect andalmost awe for the people who would,
and I wanted to find a way touse my own training to help.
So one thing I considered was,uh, something called Give an Hour.
This was a program back then that allowedyou to donate sort of an hour of free
therapy, uh, a week to, tosomebody in the population.
(03:18):
But as I thought about it,it felt too transient to me,
and I wanted to do somethingthat would be more sustainable.
So what I did was tried to pivotmy entire research program,
which up to that point had reallyfocused on anxiety disorders and adult
relationships, to look at stress, trauma,
and anxiety in the context ofrelationships within the military. Uh,
(03:40):
and so through a series of connections,
I started partnering up with the UtahNational Guard and trying to find ways to
design research studies to addressproblems they were seeing so that not only
would I be able to sort of be givingback in some way through my work,
I would be able to be directly impactingissues they were seeing and trying to
help them form recommendations.And, and honestly,
(04:02):
that work sort of launchedmy entire research career,
which led me here toGeorge Mason in, in 2009.
I guess you had early life experienceswith veterans that helped shape
your current thinking andinvolvement. Is, is that accurate?
I would say that is accurate. Um,
my kids would object to your using earlylife experiences given that I was in my
twenties. But yes, I, that's, that'sthe way I would think about it.
(04:25):
So, so talk to me a little bit aboutwhat some of those experiences were.
What kinds of things did you see thatkind of moved you in this direction?
So when I was at the VAhospital working with,
with some of the veterans at the time,uh, I, I was at that hospital in 2001,
so I was there on 9/11and, and, and after.
And so I was seeing a lot of the veteranswho were coming from the Vietnam era
(04:49):
and also from sort of the firstGulf War era. And what I saw,
especially in the Vietnam eraveterans, well actually in,
in really in both populations,
was just how disrupted their relationshipshad been after they came back.
And that was a lot in terms of trying tounderstand what they were experiencing
now that they were done, um, and,and how to explain that to others,
(05:11):
or how they couldn't explain that toothers. And I also saw just how, um,
disrupted their sense of purpose hadbecome, and I saw this throughout,
there's this incredible sense of,
of mission and purpose that these folkswere experiencing while they were part
of the military. And when they left,
they were often sort of graspingfor some element of that afterward
(05:34):
that they just couldn't recreate.
And that was really causing thema lot of distress. And so I,
I found myself wanting to find waysto think about both of those elements.
How could I do things that might impacttheir relationships and how might
I also be able to think abouthelping them, uh, regain and,
and find that purposeoutside of the military, uh,
(05:56):
while also sort of helping themin the traditional, you know,
sort of psychological sense as I wasworking with them in therapy and whatnot.
In 2020,
you helped lead the formationand launch of the Military
Veterans and Families Initiativeat George Mason, the MVFI.
Or I like to say M-V-Fi, you know?
(06:19):
What was the inspirationbehind the effort?
So when I got here over time,
I started to get connected with otherpeople at the university who also did
something that touched on the servicemember, veteran family population. Um,
at first it was researchers, peoplewould, would introduce me to, you know,
they'd say, "oh, somebody else isdoing research with this group,
you should really meet them." And so Iwould find out about this wide range of
(06:41):
research we had going on here at theuniversity from the kinds of things that I
do, looking at sort offamily adjustment, um,
up through battlefield technology tosort of classified things people couldn't
tell me about, you know, andall, all sorts of things. And,
and if you look really at our, I,I know you know this, you know,
if you look at our research portfolio, uh,
over 50% of our federally fundedprojects come from the DOD over the past
(07:02):
several years.
Yep, that is true.
So we have just an incredible rangeYeah, pf, of, of research there.
But I also met folks whoare working with students.
We had an Office of Military Services, uh,
that started here under theleadership of Jennifer Connors,
who's still their director nowwith her associate director,
Ryan Barnett and some other staff.
They serve the just huge number ofstudents we have here at George Mason.
(07:24):
When we started this work,
about 10% of our student bodyself-identified as service member,
veteran or family. Um,we're now up to almost 14%.
We have well over 5,000 students,um, who are in this, this group.
And so that really just sort of spoketo us as we all sort of talked to each
other, we're like, wow,there's a lot going on here.
But what I think really kicked us offto think about what we're trying to do
(07:45):
with MVFI is seeing allof the other ways that we
touched on this population that wasembedded in our education and research
missions. So a couple of examples: I learned about the M-Vets Clinic. (07:54):
undefined
This is a clinic that runsthrough our law school. Every,
every law school has theirthird year law students,
they've gotta get practical experience.
The way our law school does it is to givefree services to veterans with certain
types of legal issues. Andthe students sit first chair,
and then there's a barred faculty memberwho sits, um, second chair with them.
(08:14):
And so under the leadershipof Tim MacArthur,
that group has been servingveterans for years at this point.
And then I also foundthat we had this, uh,
incredible Veterans in the Arts programthat's actually a nationally recognized
research program led by Niyati Dhokai inour College of Visual Performing Arts,
where in the context of research on howart impacts the service member, veteran,
family community, um,
(08:36):
they are serving thousands of veteransthrough free workshops. They come in,
they do the workshops, and they're,we're talking painting, photography.
They're closing on 20,000 folks thatthey've served over the past decade
or so in that program.
And so we just had these unique types ofways that we serve veterans that I did
(08:56):
not see at other universities.
And so when we all gottogether and started talking,
we wanted to find a way to connect these,
because the two thingswe realized were, one,
a lot of people didn't know about thisunless you knew where to look outside the
university. And two,
a lot of even the people doing theseefforts didn't know each other and didn't
know about the efforts. And sowe wanted to connect them. Um,
(09:18):
and that was really theinspiration behind the,
the effort was to try toconnect the programs, grow them,
and really raise the visibility becausewe thought we should be shouting this
from the rooftop so that people know.
So really you see this more as amatchmaking kind of framework. It's,
is that right?
It started as that, yes.
Okay. Well talk about whatspecific services you offer,
and then let's talk aboutsome of the successes.
(09:40):
Yeah, sounds good. So, soin addition to those, we,
we've seen some other growth. Anotherreally interesting program we had, um,
was something calledEducate the Educators.
So back in the sort of mid 2010s,
Michelle Obama and Jill Biden hada whole initiative around sort of
recognizing all thatmilitary service members and,
and veterans and families were doing.
(10:01):
And one component of that wascalled Educate the Educators.
They wanted to train teachers in how toknow the challenges and the resources
available to military children.
And so Jill Biden actually came to ourcampus to announce the sort of initiative
because we were already doing thework. Uh, Jennifer Drake Patrick,
a faculty member in our College ofEducation and Human Development had
developed,
(10:21):
Educate the Educators modules that werebeing embedded into our curriculum for
all future teachers within our Collegeof Education and Human Development.
So we were able to sort of really put aspotlight on that and help that shine.
That is now actuallyprofessional education that is available to all teachers
from preschool up through 12th gradethroughout the state of Virginia.
No, that's pretty cool.
(10:41):
I think people underestimate whatyoung people who were in military,
look, I was a young person in a militaryfamily and then, and served myself.
As a young person,
one of the things Ioftentimes remember is that
you would establish friendships, andyour friendships were in, you know,
two to four year cycles. Right. You,
(11:03):
you establish these friendshipsand then the next thing you know,
you're off to anotherduty station and you would
essentially start all over.
And these moves didn't come at,you know, the opportune time.
And, and I remember, you know, justwhen life was getting good for me,
(11:23):
Trust, when things were gettingreally good, there was a move.
Boom, yeah.
And you start all over, right? And,
and so I think it probably affectsthose young people relative to
how they maintain andengage relationships.
Because everything is temporary, right?
(11:44):
I believe I have fewer lifelongrelationships, right, because
of it. I've had a couple ofrelationships endure everything.
But I can see where it's,where it can be a problem.
Yeah. You're so spot on with that. And,
and this is really one of the thingsthat grabbed us when we started this work
and, and why it's not justmilitary veterans, right, or service member veterans.
(12:06):
And it's,
it's military veterans and familiesbecause the impact is so huge and,
and honestly, when you meet thefamilies, right. Um, and this,
this was part of what reallyhit me in my early work,
the amount of resilience andcommitment that they have,
but they don't necessarilyget recognized, right.
When they're walking through the airport,people aren't applauding for them,
(12:26):
right, you know, I mean...
People don't say, thankyou for your service.
No, they don't. Right. And,and boy, they should! And,
and one of the things that,
that we've actually been able to do thatreally speaks exactly to what you were
just talking about, uh, here at GeorgeMason, after we've started the MVFI, um,
Jennifer Drake Patrick,that same faculty member,
has also recently stood up with somesupport from us and some philanthropic
(12:46):
donations we've gotten in,has been able to stand up, um,
Student Ambassador days. Sohigh schools in this area,
most of 'em have StudentAmbassador Programs.
These are students who are sort of chargedwith helping new students transition
in Right. And, and helpthem out. Obviously,
the military children are a hugepiece of that part. Yeah. Right.
You know what I mean?
Without question. Especially here.
Yeah. And so, um, andthey're coming in at all,
(13:08):
at all times of the yearand everything else.
And so what we do now is wehost those students. We brought,
we bring students here to campus.
They have a day on campus with our facultyand our students sort of training up
in different ways to do this work andlearning specifically about some of the
challenges that the military childrenhave and getting ready to work with them.
And so we've been able to dothat work and kind of amplify it.
(13:30):
Started with one day with Fairfax, andnow we have more than we can handle. Um,
we got Prince William wanting to come in.We got Arlington, Alexandria, Loudoun,
and, and so now we're, we're out theretrying to find some more funds to,
to support that work because we've gotmore demand than we can supply. Um,
so a another one that, that I'm reallyexcited by to, to see how it's come is,
(13:50):
was a success both in starting somethingnew and then connecting programs.
We took that M-Vets model and we have, uh,
what's called the Center for CommunityMental Health here at George Mason,
operates out the College ofHumanities and Social Sciences.
It's led by Robyn Mehlenbeck.
And they provide therapy andassessment to the community through
clinical psychology students,social work students,
(14:12):
and counseling students whoare all in graduate programs,
training to be therapists andassessors and whatnot, um, in their,
in their future life. So it's a similarmodel to the M-Vets program. Um,
there is a cost associated with that.
They're one of the lowest cost thingsin the area, but there's still a cost.
And we've actually been able to, again,
raise philanthropic funds to supportthe provision of services free to
veterans and now their families as well.
(14:34):
So any veteran or family in the areawho needs therap,y needs assessment can
come to our clinic and can getthat free through that service.
We actually now have a second fund.
Wow. Do we, do we advertise that?Is that something that's known?
We do.
We actually partner with the Departmentof Veteran Services here in Virginia to
make sure that they know.
And so we actually sometimes havepeople referred from Richmond, Roanoke,
(14:56):
you know, to, to come up forassessments in particular, um,
because those are hard to get andextremely expensive. A thorough, you know,
psychological assessment.
The community is gonna cost youanywhere from three to $5,000.
And they can get that free.
They can get that free.
Outstanding. That's amazing.
On the student side, um,
we have actually started to work andconnect a lot of our different student
(15:16):
offices around campus to the Office ofMilitary Services through this work so
that everybody's kind of on the same page.
So we now have a monthly group that meets,
and we have representatives fromthe Office of Military Services,
Registrar's office, financialaid, Student Accounts,
Counseling and Psychological Services,um, Center for Community Mental Health.
I'm gonna forget some...CareerServices...so that everybody knows the different
(15:38):
things that are going on. Andeverybody also knows, hey,
if you get a veteran coming in,
there might be special servicesavailable to them. Um, and, uh,
and so we've been able to stand thatup. We now are just about to launch,
I think this is now confirmed (15:50):
in Fall '26 we are for the first time,
gonna be able to evaluate veteransprior educational experiences
in the military, through theirjoint services transcript,
for credit here at George Mason.
And we have not been able to dothat for years just because it's,
it's kind of a morass.
But through the work of this group andthrough some advocacy from people in this
(16:11):
group, um,
we've gotten to the point now where ourtransfer credit evaluation team has put
some technology in place. And we are,we are test running it now. And so,
so far all looks good.
And so we think that we're gonna be ableto launch that starting Fall '26, um,
where people are getting, uh, muchmore credit for their prior service.
Because one, one of the things that I saw,
at least in my time working with folks,is not only the incredible purpose and,
(16:35):
and the incredible things that servicemembers master during their time,
but just how much of that doesn'tshow up on any kind of resume or
transcript except for thisjoint services transcript.
And so that is critical to being able tohelp them get toward that degree by not
making them repeat things that theyclearly have mastered in the past.
(16:55):
Oh, that's amazing. So, and,and that will then, will,
it should equal more courses being--
Credited...
--Being awarded to students.
Right.
So that they're not basically repeatingthe same thing that they already know.
Outstanding, outstanding. This MilitaryVeterans and Families Initiative,
how does it uphold Mason'svalues as an institution?
(17:16):
Yeah, in my mind, it's, it's almostthe sort of epitome of the values.
And the reason I say that is because thiswhole thing is about bringing together
inclusivity and access for students andsupporting those students with what they
need to get to their next step.
With the incredible researchenterprise that we have here,
and the expertise that we havewith serving the community
(17:41):
and being a, a place where weare, um, we are a public good,
right? We are a state entity, andwe are here serving the state.
We're doing that by serving thecommunity members. We're in one of the,
you know, most veteran-rich,service member-rich,
family-rich areas of the country.
And we have all of these servicesthat are training our students, um,
(18:03):
that are accomplishing research whilealso delivering services directly to that
population in our region. In addition,
we are one of the biggest producersof talent in the region, in the state.
And we know that in our region,
we have a number of employers who arenot only looking for great talent,
but they have specific recruitinginitiatives around veterans.
(18:26):
And so we are supplying thattalent basically by bringing these things together.
So we're able to marry the studentservices with the research mission,
with the community service missionof our university. So, to me,
it really sort of represents everything.
And it also is bringing in a whole set of,
of folks who have had a different lifeexperience than those who haven't been in
(18:50):
the military.
You know, what you call that?
I think I know what you're gonna say.
You know what we call that here?
And that's a part of the piecethat's always missing from the
discussions that we have on this topic.
You are right.
That's clear. We don't run from it.
Nope.
But I think the broader public missesthat we see this as part of the
(19:14):
diversity, the rich tapestry of diversitythat we bring to this community,
and that we work to enhance,you know, we work to engage,
and we work to incorporate in termsof what George Mason is all about.
And that kind of experience benefitsnot just the service members,
the veterans and their families,
(19:35):
benefits our students fromseeing different perspectives, different backgrounds.
I mean, you've got people who are cominghere who lived all over the world,
seeing all kinds of things, um,
and that they're bringingthat into our classrooms.
Yeah. I had a dinner last night with agroup of students, and in that group,
you know, we had former military students,and they were older than, you know,
(19:56):
the traditional students in the group,
and they brought a different setof life experiences to discussion.
They're in the same classes. Theyhave the same engagement. Uh, they,
they work in the same groups. But theybring a different set of experiences.
And that is valuable to otheryoung people who are really,
(20:16):
for lack of a better way of sayingthis, figuring themselves out.
That's Right.
A 2019- 2020 survey from the National
Center on Education Statisticsstated that veterans
represent 3.7% of allundergraduate students
in the US. Would you say thatthis data has changed since then?
(20:40):
I, yeah.
So we don't have any comprehensivestudies like that that they've done since
that I have seen what we're seeingin some of the sort of, you know,
sampling type studies, is that, thatthat number seems to be going up right,
might be inching closerto 5%. Now, in addition,
I think it's important to layer on topof that the veteran connected folks and
(21:00):
the military connected folks, thinkingabout the kids, thinking about the,
the spouses, right, 'cause militaryspouses, I, I just wanna sort of note,
they often get left out ofthe conversation, you know,
but they have their own issues withyou, you mentioned it before, right,
you know, just like the kids aremoving every one to two to four years.
So are the spouses.
And so stringing together aset of educational or work experiences is difficult.
(21:25):
So, so I think that thatnumber is inching up. Um,
it's certainly higherhere at George Mason.
We're higher than those statistics.Is that what you would say?
For sure. Yeah. We're definitelyhigher than that on the veteran side.
And then when you layer on top of that,the, um, the sort of, we, we also have,
you know, we've gotactive duty and, you know,
guard reserve who are here as well. Andthen we've got, you know, a very robust,
(21:46):
uh, enrollment of, ofdependents and spouses.
What are some of the unique experiencesthat veterans bring to the classroom?
You know, I think all kinds ofthings, right? So, on the one hand,
you've got a set of folks who have oftenhad pretty global experiences depending
on where they've been deployed.And, and when I say deployed,
I don't mean combat zones.I mean, you know, they,
(22:07):
sometimes they're going off and doingother types of missions. Also every,
you know, one to two to three, four years,there are changes of station, right?
And so sometimes they're in Germany orsometimes they're over in Korea, and,
and, and so they're bringingall of that life experience in.
But they're also bringing theexperience of being part of this
broader mission, you know, this,
(22:28):
this broader group with afairly singular mission.
And that kind of experience of beinga piece of a team to a level at
which most people haven't experienced,I, I think is just invaluable, right?
To hear about and, and, and to see.
And then they've got just a world oflogistical experience. You've got,
you've got some, you know, veterans whoare coming in having managed, you know,
(22:51):
millions of dollars of equipment,hundreds of other--right, you know,
service members beingresponsible for their lives. And,
and then they're walking intothe classroom, right. You know,
and sitting down and making a presentationwith other groups that that's gonna
change the way they think about some ofthe issues we're talking about in the
classroom. Um,
that's gonna layer on differentexperiences with other cultures as well,
(23:13):
you know, a lot of folks areout there interacting with,
with people all over the world. Right.Right. And having to kinda learn that.
It's interesting when you juxtapose thatyou may have been serving in theater in
a country,
and then you are now in the classroominteracting with students from
that country. Right?
Absolutely. Especially here. Yeah.
(23:34):
Oh, yeah. Without question.
What are some of the challenges orbarriers veterans face when returning to
school?
So one, I think, is a logistical one,
which is being able to sort of getcredit for some of the experiences and
training they have had that maps reallyclosely onto the courses that they're
now being told they have to take becausethey don't have a neat transcript that
(23:54):
shows it. Um, so that, that's, that'sa biggie. I think the, you know,
I don't know if cultureshock is the right word, but,
but having to sort of transition fromthe world they've been in to a classroom
setting can often be challenging. Itcan often be challenging, I think,
even from things as simple as a vagueassignment that is vague on purpose,
you know,
sometimes we give our students assignmentswhere part of the assignment is
(24:17):
figuring out, right, what they need to do.
Sometimes these are folks who are veryused to being told precisely what they
need to do. I had one student I workedwith who's a doctoral student, and, um,
and his phrase was always like,what's the target? Right? What, what,
what do I need to hit? Right.And I was like, unfortunately,
you gotta figure out that target.Right. You know, that that's part of it.
Part of it is findingit. Um, and so, you know,
(24:37):
so we would have these kindof back and forths, but,
but I'm gonna layer on top of all of that.
I think one thing thatdoesn't get enough attention,
which is often the search forpurpose and mission, right?
I think what we're seeing now is a realstruggle in that transition period from
service to veteran, um,
where you go from having this very clear
(24:59):
mission and,
and you're part of an entire groupthat is 100% devoted to that mission,
and then you step out, it's allkind of open. You know, what now?
And I think that sometimes that's a,
that's a bigger struggle thanwe realize sort of as as,
as folks are trying to figureout, what am I doing next?
How do we layer on that sense of purpose,that sense of mission with that work?
(25:21):
MVFI's mission of providing criticalsupport to military veterans,
and family extends to developingcurricula and learning
opportunities for ournon-military connected students to
understand the uniqueneeds and experiences of veterans and their families.
Right. Can you talk about some of thesehands-on opportunities for our students?
(25:43):
I'm so glad you asked aboutthat. So, you know, we,
we have those educate the educatormodules, right, right. Which will,
which sort of train future teachers.
We use that as a springboard to createa similar set of modules for healthcare
programs. So partnered up witha, with a nonprofit and a, a,
a medical doctor who had been in theservice and created a set of modules that
trained folks in healthcareabout different sorts of conditions they might see.
(26:07):
And again, different resourcesavailable to veterans. Um,
because what folks don't realize is themajority of veterans are getting their
care outside the VA system. Alot of times people think, oh,
I'm not gonna see it.Well, you are, right?
And especially if you're goinggraduate and practice in this region,
you're absolutely going to see it.So we wanna prepare those students.
(26:27):
Some of the other interestingthings we've been able to do,
and this is what I want, whatI hope to grow in the future,
is to be able to connect studentsin particular classes with either
veteran serving organizations,
nonprofits in the area thathave particular needs, um,
or other sorts of efforts. And so, I'llgive a couple of examples. I was, uh,
talking to somebody who was,uh, running kind of a nonprofit,
(26:50):
and they were like, you know,
we just don't have time to build out ourwebsite to sort of get our, you know,
our, our marketing out there,et cetera. And I said, well,
let me look around and turns out,and we have, not surprisingly,
a set of communication classesthat that's what they do.
And they're always on the lookoutfor clients as sort of practice
for the students to gethands-on training that semester,
(27:11):
so I was able to hook them up.
And the students got their experiencewhile helping this nonprofit
get their website off the ground.
And on the way the students also got tosort of see some of the issues that the
service member,
veteran family community is dealingwith because of the content of what they
were working on.
We had a partnership with the Departmentof Veteran Services to, um, help run,
(27:35):
uh, a suicide prevention programthat they do that's called, uh,
Virginia's "Identify, Screen,and Refer." And they needed a,
a logo so that they could give peoplesomething that would show that they had
completed a certain type of training.Well, we were able to connect them with a,
a summer class in graphic design here,
and the students as part of theirfinal projects, each submitted designs,
(27:58):
and then the,
all the final designs were sent tothe Department of Veteran Services,
and they selected a winner,
and then that student was ableto come down and talk about it.
Turns out it was a military kid. And inthe middle of his presentation, the, uh,
Commissioner of, uh, VeteranServices was there, stood up, uh,
came up and gave him a military coinfor doing such a great job. It was,
(28:19):
it was just a really, really coolmoment for one of our students. Yeah.
Outstanding.
So why is it important for studentsto learn about the unique needs of
military veterans and theirfamilies, other students?
Yeah. I, I see it as, as one:
part of our broader approachto, as you said before, right?
From the perspective of diversity,recognizing we live in a, you know,
(28:44):
global and diverse world.
And our students need to beprepared for that in all aspects.
Not just in one aspect of diversity,not in two or three aspects,
but all aspects. This isanother one. In addition,
a lot of our students are going out thereand doing work that is where they're
gonna be interacting with folks.And, and guess what?
a huge percentage of our populationis military or veteran connected.
(29:07):
So developing competence to work withthat group is sort of critical to success.
If you're in a service field, you needto be prepared for that. And just,
if you're gonna be a person whointeracts with other colleagues,
you should be preparedfor that to some degree.
And so I see it as another piece of whatwe are delivering to our students in
(29:27):
terms of training them to be prepared toengage with the full range of diversity
they're gonna experiencewhen they leave this place.
Especially if you stay in this area.
Absolutely.
Right? Which more than70% of our students do.
You stay in this area for a job,
it's a high probability you're gonnadeal with people from the military.
(29:50):
For sure.
And so you need to have an understandingor even some life experiences where
you've engaged with folk in the classroomand others. That's right. So you,
you're an accomplishedprofessor here at George Mason,
and you've gotten multiple teachingawards. Right. And, you know,
I always would envy you folk overin psychology because, you know,
everything you do is sorelatable. Yeah.
(30:10):
which made it easierto win teaching awards.
I feel like you're knockingdown my award a little bit.
you deal with the human conditionand everybody has a dog in the hunt.
And they don't necessarily have thatwith differential equations.
I get it.
but how have your experienceswith the military community
(30:34):
impacted your approach to teaching?
It's a, it's a great question. I'mgonna sort of put two elements to it.
One is sort of my broaderexperiences, right?
It's just kind of opened my eyes to a
very particular slice of diversity thatI would not have otherwise been aware
of. And so that then makesme realize in my teaching,
like I have to realize peoplein my classroom might have had
(30:58):
any range of experiences thatI'm not aware of. You know,
when I started out earlyon in my teaching career,
a lot of what I did reliedon the relatability, right, of the material. And, um,
you can make that be prettyfun. I realized, you know,
over time that some ofwhat I was making fun, um,
(31:18):
I wasn't making fun of it,but I was making fun with it.
But that was probably prettypersonal to a student in my class,
and I didn't realize it. And so Iwas able to sort of shift my, as, as,
as I had some more of theseexperiences, in particular,
some of the experienceswith the military folks,
I was able to start to shift theway that I delivered my material,
even to be a little bit more sensitiveto that, I think, and to be, um,
(31:40):
a little bit more aware.
It also opened my eyes to the importanceof exposing people to different
perspectives in ways ofthinking. And this one,
I'll get a little more personal in, inthis region, right? You make friends,
right? You know, you meet people,um, who are coming in. And, um,
number of years ago as I was sort ofstarting in this work, uh, you know,
we had a military familykind of move into the,
(32:01):
the neighborhood and kids were the sameage, you know, and everything else.
So we, we spent a lot of time togetherand I ended up getting into some sort of
in-depth conversations with theirfather who was a, a military member.
And, and that really led to this kind ofwhat now is probably going on almost 10
years of occasionally sort ofstepping aside and having really deep
(32:22):
conversations about issues wherewe have differing perspectives and
trying to understand each other.
And that has kind of formed the basisfor how I think about what we need to be
teaching all of our students,
because we have far toolittle of people with from
different perspectives tryingto engage with each other,
(32:43):
to understand each other,
as opposed to put each other down orshut each other down. And in fact,
that that really is driving some of thework I'm now doing in my current role
in, in sort of senior associateprovost for undergrad ed,
trying to think about how do we fosterthese types of experiences in our
students.
He came with me actually to an eventwe had last year pre-election that we
(33:06):
hosted through our Office of CommunityEngagement and Civic Learning.
And the Schar School sent overJennifer Victor and Lucas Núñez,
and there was this whole sort of, uh,
engagement of students and staff andfaculty around particular issues. Um,
and it was all fact-basedand sort of respectful,
but trying to sort of think aboutdifferent sides of the same issue and,
you know, and, and wherepeople were coming from.
(33:28):
So seeing how that can happen andhow intentional that has to be,
particularly now, um,
has really shaped my thinking abouthow to teach in a way that makes people
confront other ideas from aperspective of learning more about it.
Not just shooting it down.
As someone with extensive experienceat this intersection of the
(33:53):
military community and higher ed,
what would you say is one wayhigher ed can improve themselves in,
in terms of the support of veterans,the military and their families?
I would love to see higher ed pushourselves in thinking about the
military veteran family communitywithin diversity work. As you said,
(34:14):
you know, I mean, thisis, this is work that,
that has to happen because it'swho our student body is, right?
So how do we make sure it's robust sothat it's capturing the totality of what
we mean by diversity? So I would loveto see us incorporate this, you know,
the sort of understanding of thepopulation and understanding the
totality of what the, thepopulation goes through.
(34:36):
Because I think a lot of times whenpeople say, oh yeah, you know, I mean,
I wanna make sure I knowabout the military veteran community so that I know how
to recognize when somebody's got PTSD.And it's like, that's not the totality,
right? I mean, you know, that is,
that is such a small piece of thingsthat I think I'm really glad we have
awareness of it, but I think it's kindof overtaken and overshadowed the, the,
(34:57):
the sort of totality of experience.Let's recognize the, the benefits,
let's recognize the rich sort ofexperience that folks are bringing to the
table. Um,
and let's start embeddingthat in trainings for faculty and staff so that we're
aware of it and we can actuallynot only serve our students better,
but leverage thatexperience to benefit all of
(35:19):
our students more. And within that work,
my real hope is that we don'tjust stay focused on veterans
only, but we really broaden outto think about military spouses,
military children,
and the entirety of the family becausethat whole group brings a set of
experiences to the table that we needto recognize and, and acknowledge.
(35:42):
That is good stuff.
So what encourages you to continueworking with and advocating
for the veteran community?
Every now and again, with thisveteran opportunities group,
some sort of emergent issue pops up.
And because that group is functioningso well together and, and so tight,
we're able to sort of problem solve it.
(36:03):
And we help a student who is aboutto lose their benefits, right?
Or who is about to have to stopout because their benefits ended,
and we figure out a way to keep them inand get them over the finish line. When,
when I see those kindsof things, I get excited.
And when I see the kinds ofthings we've been able to do,
standing up the Student Ambassador Days,
starting these services at Center forCommunity Mental Health for the folks, um,
(36:25):
continuing the serviceswe're doing through M-Vets.
When I see those kind of impacts,
as much as this is all done right nowwith just donated time and effort from
folks across the university,
it keeps you going and itmakes you wanna keep doing it.
Outstanding. Outstanding. Well,we really, really appreciate you,
and we appreciate the work you're doingfor our students and for our veterans
(36:45):
and their families.
There you go. There you go. Well,I appreciate the opportunity.
Outstanding. Well, we're gonnahave to leave it there. Keith,
thank you for joining us and for yourhard work in helping George Mason
University students succeed. I am GeorgeMason president Gregory Washington.
Thanks for listening, and tune in nexttime for more conversations that show why
(37:09):
we are All Together, Different.
If you like what youheard on this podcast,
go to podcast.gmu.edu formore of Gregory Washington's
conversations with thethought leaders, experts,
and educators who take on the grandchallenges facing our students, graduates,
and higher education.That's podcast.gmu.edu.
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