Joey Gulotta

 

University of WisconsinStout is once again making splashes on the national stage. The university has received recognition as being one of the country’s top universities for veterans. For 2017, UWStout is being recognized as a Military Friendly School, a Best for Vets School and a Top Military school.

 

This marks the seventh straight year that UWStout is being recognized as a Military Friendly School, a designation granted by Victory Media which selects the top 15% of the 12,000 veterans administration-approved colleges. This accolade is published yearly in the G.I. Jobs magazine, which focuses on finding veterans civilian work.

 

Military Times—another publication recognizing UWStout for its accomplishments—gave Stout a bronze ranking and ranked Stout 96th in the publication’s top 130 schools. This ranking takes into consideration things like whether the school has a vet center, support staff and extracurriculars.

 

Sarah Godsave, Stout’s new full-time coordinator for military benefits, had the following to add about what makes Stout’s vet program unique: “It’s been developed with student veteran inputs. Working with them, asking them what they want and what they need, and reacting to that with the service we provide.”

 

Further explaining Stout’s role in serving those who served us, she explained that “UWStout provides veteran specific counseling on education benefits, and our veterans student org is very active both on campus and in the community.”

 

Another member of the Veterans Services team, Eric Consela, went on to explain some of the educational benefits counseling.

 

“Once they get us their documentation, it’s pretty easy from term to term for them. We set things up for them and we take care of many of the administrative tasks that are required of the students, and we try to be a buffer or liaison between the VA and the student, so that once they have those benefits set up they can come to us and we can contact the VA for them and sort out any issues they might be having,” Consela said.

 

The final award given to UWStout this year for veteran services comes from Military Advanced Education, which has named the school one of its “Top Schools” for the third time. UWStout currently has 392 students who are veterans or who are currently serving in the military.

 

UW–Stout’s Office of Veteran Services where Sarah Godsave and Eric Consela work is located in Bowman Hall, and Eric also touted the benefit of the new Veterans Resource Center in the same location. “Our Veterans Resource Center that we just added is a key piece of the accessibility we offer to veterans,”  he commented.

 

Cumulatively, these two centers for veterans, combined with the student org and the campus having a veterans relations senator on the Stout Student Association, appear to have UWStout positioned to welcome veterans for years to come with a breadth of services.

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