UHCL veteran students meet with VSO director candidates

UHCL hosted four candidates for the Director of Office Veteran Services position, March 20-22, providing opportunities for students to meet each candidate in open forums. The Veteran Services Office (VSO) has not had a director since the previous one left in August 2018, shortly followed by the departure of the interim director in November 2018.

University personnel and a selected veteran student panel have previously conducted interviews with the four final candidates for the position, but these open forums were the first chance for the greater student population to meet with the candidates. Interim Vice President of Student Affairs Daniel Maxwell provided an update to the director hiring process to The Signal in an article published March 4, but otherwise, this is the first update regarding the director hiring process communicated directly to veteran students since January.

The candidate open forums provided a chance for veteran students and community members to have candid conversation with the four candidates, Kristopher Butler, Phil Gore, Ian Todd and Matthew Watkins.

Kristopher Butler

Kristopher Butler is the veteran enrollment program manager at the University of Houston. Butler said his experience working in the UH system makes him very familiar with the veteran enrollment process and the day-to-day needs for running a successful veteran enrollment operation.

“My 90-day goal is to have buy-in from the veteran student community that I am a trustworthy and reliable resource,” Butler said. “I want to streamline the business processes of the office.”

After the early establishment period, Butler’s goals expand from ensuring the daily operations are optimized to creating new opportunities for the veteran students at UHCL.

“I want to strengthen and cultivate community partnerships,” Butler said. “I want to utilize institutional research to identify and recognize high-achieving veteran students and to cultivate internship and work opportunities for veteran students.”

Butler’s main priority, however, is to ensure that the veteran students at UHCL trust and recognize the VSO as a safe space and valuable resource for information.

“I want to increase the transparency in the office,” Butler said. “I want to limit the amount of time that the staff spends sending veteran students to other offices. Every staff member should be an expert on the available resources and should be able to refer students to the programs that they need to. This office should be a resource for the student experience in higher education, period.”

Phil Gore

Phil Gore is the director of military and veterans affairs at Georgia Southern University. He has held the position for nearly six years and expressed pride in the significant improvements to veteran services the university has undergone since his establishment there.

“Savannah has a large military community, but the university wasn’t doing enough for that community and wanted to do more,” Gore said.

Gore helped to create a program that actively connected veteran students with each other, the school and the greater veteran community outside of the school.

“A big part of it was changing the campus culture,” Gore said. “I very quickly got involved to get a veteran rep on the Student Government Association. I also arranged for veteran student ambassadors to each college on campus.”

Gore said student involvement in community activities and campus life is important to cultivate and he wants to strengthen the veteran community presence at UHCL organically, working with the demographics of the UHCL veteran student population, which includes a significant number of non-traditional students.

“What works best for the existing population?” Gore said. “Having stuff on campus is great, but a lot of times we’re not on campus. You have to ask the people you want to come what they want to do, when they want to do it.”

Ian Todd

Ian Todd is the manager for volunteer resources at Harris Health Systems in Houston and has previous experience as a leadership program developer at UH-Main. Todd said he plans to utilize his experience with developing veteran students into campus leaders as a tool to encourage veteran student engagement with campus life and activities.

“Electronic engagement is key,” Todd said.

Todd explained his experience working with Combined Arms, a Houston-based, one-stop resource for veterans that offers holistic and customized support. He hopes to utilize his connection with the service to provide a similarly holistic approach to veteran services on UHCL.

“It is a tool that could help to consolidate and identify the needs of the veteran student population,” Todd said.

Todd feels that there are even more valuable resources to veteran student success that are being underutilized at UHCL — the veteran students.

“It’s not just the few, the proud — It’s not just about the people working in the office to fill out the GI Bill paperwork,” Todd said. “It’s about the entire student veteran population.”

Todd said that many campuses view the special needs and administrative requirements of their veteran student populations as issues that need to be dealt with.

“Student vets are not something to be dealt with,” Todd said. “They’re an energy source to harness. We have something to offer to the larger campus community.”

Matthew Watkins

Matthew Watkins is the current manager of veteran affairs at Palm Beach State College. He has experience with fundraising, lobbying for state and federal funding and identifying and networking with private donors from his experience at Palm Beach.

Watkins plans to levy these skills in order to fund expansions to the programs offered for veterans at UHCL, including employment and benefits workshops for veterans, informational sessions about the GI Bill and veteran needs for faculty and staff, veteran-oriented symposiums, moral-focused activities and expanded scholarship resources.

These are ambitious programs, Watkins admits, but not outside his realm of experience.

“When I came to Palm Beach, they had nothing,” Watkins said. “I was able to design and implement all of these programs, there.”

Watkins feels like they can be implemented at UHCL.

“I already have the programs worked out,” Watkins said. “I give it six months to implement them here.”

His first priority, Watkins said, is more immediate.

“Spring 2020 will have a new certification process for the GI Bill,” Watkins said. “Preparing the [UHCL] program for that is our number one priority.”

What’s next

As of April 4, the VSO did not have an exact timeline as to continued hiring decisions, said Interim Coordinator of Veteran Services Natasia Pilling.

Despite that, “Progress has indeed be made,” Pilling said. “We will be providing the student body with a more concrete update as soon as we are able.”

For additional information on VSO, read more here:

Veteran students welcomed by SDEI, but still waiting on VSO director

Early January, before the spring 2019 semester began, the Office of Student Affairs sent an email with an update regarding the progress of the university’s efforts to hire a replacement director and support staff for the Veteran Services Office. Additionally, the email said the VSO would be moving out of the Division of Academic Affairs and into the Division of Student Affairs effective immediately. One student asks for more information about the current progress of the hiring process.

EDITORIAL: Delayed hiring of VSO leadership hinders veteran students’ educational journey

It has been four months since Ruiz left the VSO and one month since Hernandez left. The positions for director and coordinator of VSO have still not been posted to the careers page of the UHCL website.

Interviews for new director of Veteran Services Office underway

The Veteran Services Office has been understaffed for over the past six months, but the national search for a new director is coming closer to an end.