The transitional experience of student Veterans into higher education

Abstract: The transitional experience from the military into higher education can pose unique challenges to student veterans, especially for those who seek to obtain professional licensure in nursing. This action research study sought to identify and understand these challenges. Participants and data collected in Cycle 1 were student veterans entering higher education nursing programs, veteran affairs professionals, and nursing faculty. Action steps were designed, implemented, and evaluated in Cycle 2 to provide impactful student programming for veteran affairs offices, to provide opportunities for student veteran engagement, and to increase student veteran academic success through student-driven conversation sessions. The student-driven conversation series was delivered to a group of student veterans five times and focused on key challenges identified during the 0 and 1 research Cycles. These key challenges that were identified were 1. housing, 2. non-veteran peer connection, 3. university structure and interface, 4. faculty interactions, 5. achieving academic success. The five sessions were developed by the study’s student researcher and co-facilitated by student veteran programming professionals at the research site. Assessing the results of this action research study included a triangulation technique between current literature, student veteran affairs professionals, and qualitative data gathered from student veterans. The study confirmed that each key challenge identified is a complex issue student veterans face upon transitioning into higher education programs. This conformation led to more in-depth data on each challenge thus providing veteran affairs specialists with the knowledge needed to address some of these issues. These sessions concluded that student veterans do benefit from the Office of Veterans Programs and can continue to benefit from proactive student engagement programming and frequent communication from the university at resources available to them as student veterans.