VA office provides services to vets

Stanford’s Student Services Center opened the Student Veteran Affairs Office (VA) last spring to better provide University resources for students affiliated with the military.

The Student Services Center is training staff to help veterans with the educational benefits. (LINDA CICERO/Stanford News Service)

The VA office, which was created in collaboration with the Office of the University Registrar and the Financial Aid Office, helps students obtain their veteran and chapter benefits, and also provides guidance regarding tuition and certification procedures. Following the principles of excellence established in an executive order signed last April, the office’s trained staff also provides face-to-face assistance, which has shown promising results.

According to Lori Gager, associate director of the Student Services Center, the office provides assistance to around 89 students throughout the quarter.

Many students find out about the VA office through word of mouth, but Jeanette Hoggatt, a student services specialist, emphasized the office’s online presence on its own website and that of the Financial Aid Office and the Registrar.

Steve Skentzos Ph.D. ’17, who served in the Navy as a submarine nuclear reactor operator, said that the office has been helpful in solving issues that have persisted for student veterans in the past. .

“It’s been good that the office has been formed within Student Services because before, it was pretty unorganized [and] nobody ever seemed to know what was going on,” said Skentzos, a second-year psychology graduate student.

Despite the improvement, Skentzos said there is still room for improvement.

“There were a couple forms that I needed to fill out that nobody really told me about until months later,” Skentzos said. “I ended up getting my money like a quarter late.”

Currently, office hours specifically for veterans are available every Tuesday from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m., and the SSE offers general office hours throughout the week.

“We don’t exclude seeing veterans anytime they come to the SSE,” Gager said.  “We just happen to have the office open for their specific questions on Tuesdays.”

Plans for improvement and expanding of the program are underway. Gager explained that the VA staff is currently collaborating with a group of people appointed by the Vice Provost of Student Affairs.

“The hope is that the office would be expanded to include a permanent staffing to do the certification and all of the benefits of coordination and administration with the Department of Veterans Affairs,” Gager said.

Other objectives include adding staff involved in coordinating the program’s outreach and connections and expanding office hours specific to student veterans.  Gager also explained that not all students receiving benefits are student veterans— some are active military, ROTC or dependents. Therefore, creating a sense of belonging in the military-affiliated community is a paramount goal of VA.

However, funding is still a challenge that VA office faces in order to be able to pursue all of its developmental changes. The office has recently been issued a grant by the Stanford Affiliation Group, a promising start in its pursuit for development.

“The most important thing is that we need the resources and the staffing to be able to coordinate the services and programs that we want to do for this very special audience,” Gager said.

Contact Sofia Filippa at sofiaf ‘at’ stanford.edu.