Area Colleges Respond to Increase in Veterans Enrolling

As more and more veterans are showing up on college campuses across the nation, Maryland has taken steps to reach out to veterans more through more on-campus services.

CCBC and UMBC are two of the universities who signed the Maryland Campus Compact for Student Veterans recently. Both colleges, who already have staff dedicated to responding to the needs of veterans, have seen an influx of veterans in the recent years.

CCBC has 800 veterans enrolled between the three campuses, with 400 on the Catonsville campus. Several years ago, the Catonsville campus had as little as 150.

At UMBC, a total of 219 veterans were enrolled in the fall of 2010.

Ellen Robinson, the veterans services coordinator at CCBC, said the growth at CCBC has been incredible. She runs the veterans service center office in Catonsville that serves as the one-stop location for veterans to find all the programs and services are available to them. Also in the office, five soldiers work as part of a work study program in the office.

“It’s easy for a veteran to talk to another soldier,” Robinson said. “We want to make it as easy as we can for a soldier to come in and get his education and be successful.”

A veteran enrolled at CCBC Catonsville who wrote a controversial essay published in the student newspaper this fall highlighted the difficulties veterans have adjusting to civilian life.

Sandra Kurtinitis, president of CCBC, said the incident highlighted the need to partner with the Veterans Affairs offices in Maryland.

“We’ll just do what we have already done but we’ll do it to a greater degree,” she said.

The college will also open a veterans center on campus that will provide more space and services for veterans programs, she said.

At UMBC, Fritzie Charne-Merrwether , the special assistant to the vice president for student affairs, said she has also watched the number of veterans increase at UMBC.

The challenge at a four-year university, Merrwether said, is to make the veterans aware that there are services available to them. Not all students identify themselves as veterans when they enroll, she said.

As part of the compact, UMBC is looking to expand programs like a veterans resource guide and a mentor program that pairs freshman veterans with senior veterans.

“We shouldn’t know about a vet when there’s a problem,” she said. “We should know about them early on.”