Drawing upon recent published studies concerning veteran students and the Post 9/11 GI Bill, the authors extract the top issues military veterans face during their transition into an academic environment and pursuit of higher-level education. Building upon models proposed by Malone (2009) related to military individual training, Lowman (1995) related to student learning and Ambrose (2013) concerning student motivation, the authors adapt an ecological model used by Packard (2016) in her targeted STEM mentoring programs to develop a mentoring program focused on improving the efficacy of veteran students pursuing STEM majors as a means of mitigating those issues and improving graduation rates. The authors describe the longitudinal study of veteran student efficacy they will conduct in the College of Engineering & Information Technology (CEIT) at Georgia Southern University (2016-2020) to assess the effectiveness of the STEM mentoring effort.
Keith Landry, PhD, PE, F.ASCE
Colonel (Retired), US Army
Dr. Jackson is an experienced Engineering Administrator, Educator, and Researcher. He has completed over $5M in externally funded research and has published more than 75 scholarly works related to Civil Engineering and Construction. His academic career includes several appointments in higher education instruction, research, and administration. He is currently Chair of the Department of Civil Engineering and Construction Management at Georgia Southern University, where he recently received the 2015 Chancellor’s Service Excellence in Leadership Award. He is also a licensed Professional Engineer and actively participates with numerous professional organizations, maintaining an excellent reputation for quality, integrity and ethics.
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