I’ve always been fascinated by overachievers — that one person or those few people who stand out in a space, who by their nature change what it means to be in a job or profession. Modern surgery, and to extent modern medicine, was disproportionately affected by the interests and habits of William Stewart Halsted, a Yale graduate, prolific innovator, and a founder of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Halsted created the template for residency programs, which he envisioned as competitive, hierarchical, and almost monastic in their dedication to medicine and science. He was a fierce and uncompromising man. And the medical field, from residency programs to hospitals to operating rooms, still bears his mark.

One space that’s still relatively undeveloped is the place in colleges where a leader, often a veteran, helps guide a university’s administration to provide for its student veteran population. There aren’t any guidebooks, there isn’t a professional certification mechanism — it’s just a place where colleges drop interested administrators and hope for the best.

At present, there’s nobody doing a better job for and with student veterans at their college than Michael Brown, an Army vet at Villanova University. Whether it’s posting job opportunities in the veteran-liaison space, fundraising, mentoring, or sharing thoughts about what Villanova offers student veterans, Brown is always working to further veterans’ interests in college, and making the process more easy and accessible for them than it was for him. Brown is the Prince Family Director, Office of Veterans and Military Service Members at Villanova University. He sat down to talk with me about what goes into doing that job successfully.

THE BIG STORY

Speaking For Student Veterans On Campus

Part advocate, part leader, part therapist, a successful university veteran liaison has to be good at many tasks.

Adrian Bonenberger: I’ve been following your work for a while, now. What attracted you to Villanova? Are you from the area?

Michael Brown: I was working at a community college doing the same thing, and had a bunch of veterans there. Hundreds every semester. I saw the Villanova posting and said, “Wow, that seems like a really great opportunity.” Thinking about my time at the community college (which was pretty close to Villanova, so yes, proximity was part of it) there was not one veteran who transferred to Villanova. I thought that if I was at Villanova, I could change that. I wanted to create pathways for people to come to Villanova from community colleges or elsewhere. Fast forward five years, and that's what we've done, and we will continue to do as long as I'm here.

Adrian Bonenberger: Tell me more about how you came to that vision of a Villanova that was more attractive to transfer students, and whether you’ve achieved your goals.

Michael Brown: When I got to Villanova, one of the questions I asked (as a job interview is as much for the employer as it is for the employee, in my opinion) was: how many veterans do you have? In the undergraduate space, the administration was aware of one veteran here at Villanova. On the whole campus! Compared to some of the other schools in the area, that was dramatically lower. Being an enlisted veteran myself and using the Post-9/11 GI Bill for an undergraduate degree, I felt that elite schools, private schools, should be an option. I said, “I want to think about Villanova values. And how we incorporate having student veterans on campus as far as part of the strategic plan, the goals of the institution.”

Part of it is education, talking to student veterans out in the world about Villanova being a viable option. Increasing Yellow Ribbon opportunities at Villanova so it makes financial sense, while creating an environment on campus and in the community that's ready for veterans. Having employers understand that student veterans are here, having alumni understand that veterans are here. It's talking to the Career Center and Alumni Relations and academic deans and faculty members. All of these things combined creates a positive environment for veterans. Before I arrived, I don't think Villanova was being intentional about student veteran recruiting... not because Villanova didn't want them, Villanova just didn't know about it. So it was really educating both internal and external stakeholders about the pathways and opportunities.

Adrian Bonenberger: What were your priorities when it came to making things better for veterans?

Michael Brown: The institution empowered me to ask questions and make improvements wherever I found opportunities. Villanova wanted to diversify their campus, and had a sense that this was possible in part through student veterans. Veterans come from all walks of life. They're often first generation. Student veterans are a snapshot of America. And you mix that with their varied experiences and someone who's been on a nuclear submarine for six years in the Navy, is in a mechanical engineering class... The conversations are more dynamic. When you have someone who's served a couple tours in Iraq talking in a political science class, those conversations are different. You take the abstract from the books and from the professor, and mix in some real from the student veterans experience. I believe that enriches the classroom. The Post-9/11 GI Bill helps the financials from the college’s standpoint as well. So it's a win/win;  you’re meeting needs from a financial standpoint and having needs met from a DEI standpoint.. I failed and learned and failed again until I succeeded. The question I have is: “how can we do better by veterans, and improve the campus over time?” That's my philosophy.

Adrian Bonenberger: What about your office? Where are you, what Dean do you report to? Do you think that's the right team to report to? What’s the ideal place in a college for a student veteran liaison / veteran advocate?

Michael Brown: That's a good question. When you look at different college campuses at who's doing these things, and you read the job descriptions, which I post about all the time, one popular place for this type of role is under the Dean of Student Life, and another is Undergraduate Admissions or Enrollment Management. I fall under the latter. Some colleges have their veteran liaison doing everything from the certification of benefits to programming to recruitment. I think enrollment management is a good spot. It's a campus wide position, and I think that's important. It's not housed in one place. I work with grad students. I work with law school students, I work with undergrads. And I think that's the best model in my opinion, campus wide. Also, I'm happy that someone was hired to focus on handling student benefits and financial aid issues. I'm not stamping benefits and doing programming, someone in the Registrar's Office does the benefits. It gives me the freedom and autonomy to create an office in an environment allows for students success both in the classroom and as they progress towards their career.

Adrian Bonenberger: That makes lot of sense. On another topic — you mentioned posting on LinkedIn. And of course, that's how we connected, via LinkedIn. And I have to say I've said it before. I've talked about your work to a lot of a lot of folks. I just think it's really impressive. You post consistently and it’s very useful. What gave you the idea to do that, and where does that come from?

Michael Brown: I found the job at Villanova and the job before was word of mouth. It felt like I was lucky. Finding a career should be based more on your skill sets rather than just who you know. Every student should be networking. But having it come word of mouth, it limits the amount of people who are applying for those jobs. And so what I think and what I try to do is provide a public service basically so that other veterans and people who are interested in helping veterans can use their experiences and skill sets to say I want to do that too. And it's turned into a place where a lot of people ask me questions about what's it like, what's this career field like? But I think it also diversifies the talent pool of who's applying to those jobs. That's a good thing. It's great that the colleges and universities are creating these jobs. It's fantastic. But I also think it's great that more and more people are seeing it as an opportunity, and more and more people are applying to these roles across the country. I want fellow veterans to think of them as career opportunities… college shouldn't just be seen as a means to an end. It can be a career goal.

Adrian Bonenberger: You talked about recruiting, and I'm wondering, it sounds to me that like the LinkedIn posts are a form of recruiting. So you're recruiting broadly not for your position, but that type of position, that position writ large; or you're spreading awareness of it. As you mentioned, you're recruiting veterans who might not have thought about going to Villanova, they might not have might not have thought that they could qualify or get accepted there be successful students there.

Michael Brown: In recruiting, LinkedIn has helped get the word out. I hope people see me as someone they kind of want to be around as a veteran, as a resource and also as a source of good information. I rely on two main mechanisms to recruit. We partner with Service to School and use them as a resource to assist with finding veterans that I wouldn't otherwise see because there may be stationed far from Villanova. S2S provides education, too; they tell veterans about a variety of schools that they might be able to get to that you might not have otherwise thought of applying to and Villanova is one of them. So I appreciate what they do by way of providing education and resources around applying to more selective institutions. Having veterans at a more selective or elite school is good for the veteran and good for frankly, our nation. When you have big schools producing thought leaders and public servants who make decisions about where our military is going, if they're sitting in a class with veterans, they may be making better choices.

The other thing I do is that I'm on the road a fair amount at community colleges in the region. I'm talking to student veterans where they are and saying, “hey, you know, you're going to transfer probably in a year or two, make sure you're thinking about Villanova, here are some great programs that we offer.” At the end of the day, I want student veterans to be successful in their higher ed goals. If they want to go to Drexel, or Temple, or Harvard, or wherever they want to go, I'm happy to talk to them about that, too.

Those are the two main mechanisms for recruitment: nationally using S2S, and more regionally, traveling directly to community colleges.

Adrian Bonenberger: Last question, on my end. What attributes make a successful veterans liaison at the college level in your estimation?

Michael Brown: Some of the things that I've seen for unsuccessful liaisons is when they focus just on recruitment. They want the numbers and I believe that creates an environment where it's transactional in nature. And I believe a successful Veterans Program is relational in nature as opposed to transactional in nature. It's meeting the veteran where they are. It's wanting them to be successful in the classroom, not just focused on “Oh, you need to make sure you're on this very specific path to a career.” It's being a trusted agent for each individual veteran on a college campus. Some need handholding, some need direction, some just want someone to talk to. A successful veterans liaison is being a Swiss army knife for the student veteran, and that takes persistence and the ability to relate to people and put yourself in their shoes, a little bit of empathy and understanding. I was a student veteran, I got out of the Army and I didn't know anything. Having more people who were student veterans in these roles will probably help —It's got to be a collaborative office. It can't just be a siloed office, it has to include both internal and external stakeholders. And what I mean by that is, we have people from the Career Center come to the Veterans Center all the time and meet with our veterans, but I also work with 50 Strong, a national brand, and push our veterans out to them as well. It's being able to say, “here are the issues and problems our veterans are facing, and let's solve those, let's not create our own problems or create our own solutions to meet made-up problems. Let's actually listen and learn from our students and provide opportunities and solutions for them at the moment, and be collaborative and relational.” That, in my opinion, is a recipe for enduring success on a college campus.

Adrian Bonenberger: I didn't realize that you had been a student veteran yourself as well. And you're right I was I was a student veteran at Columbia and then at SUNY Stony Brook. And yeah, if you haven't had to struggle through housing, like not as an 18-year-old in the Army, where it's already set up for you, or if you've never wrestled with student meal plans as a student veteran, especially if you've got a family, you might not understand what those challenges can be like. It's tough to make sense of that and there are a lot of variables out there that I think to your point, you know, that proverbial retired Lieutenant Colonel just might not see or understand or be able to predict, not haven't gone through that experience themselves beforehand. Any final thoughts on the subject?

Michael Brown: Anyone who's either interested in this career ought to check it out. If on the other hand a student veteran is out there thinking “Where do I want to go to school?” talk to the versions of me on college campus, talk to other fellow student veterans on that college campus. Don't just go because it says Harvard, don't just go there because of the brand, really start to think about the programs they have, the opportunities, but also the people. That's going to provide a better college experience than some fancy name brand.

Adrian Bonenberger. Couldn't agree more. Really appreciate your time.

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