With a federal grant for Clark College’s veterans center expiring, students worry they won’t receive the support they need to stay in school.
The grant paid for two of the four staff positions at the center, as well as 25 laptops and other equipment. The center — which has rooms for meetings and studying, as well as couches and an air hockey table — is where students go to get help accessing U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs benefits.
Of Clark College’s 8,500 or so students, about 400 are veterans and 800 are military children or spouses.
“The biggest thing we do is we create a sense of community here at the college for military-affiliated students,” said Donna Larson, a U.S. Air Force veteran and associate director of the veterans center. “They have a safe place where they can come. We can advocate for them.”
Grant dries up
In 2020, Clark’s Veterans Center of Excellence received a $449,460 grant for the 2021-23 budget year. The U.S. Department of Education extended Clark’s grant to the end of 2024 because the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted services.
Military spouse Monica Patton began working as the veterans center program coordinator in January, but her grant-funded position ends this month.
The veterans center adviser, the other position funded by the expiring grant, now works on Clark College’s academic advising team and is teaching other advisers how to serve veterans and military-affiliated students.
In her role at the center, Patton organized an event celebrating the center’s 10th anniversary, as well as a career and resource fair and helped students resurrect the Veterans Club.
“We won’t be able to provide the level of support or events that we have this year,” Larson said. “We kind of knocked the ball out of the park with all the things that we were able to do, but we will be trying to do our best to do whatever we can to support our students.”
Larson will be the only employee in the veterans center after Dec. 31 until the college hires a school certifying officer, a position that manages education benefits from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. (The person who previously held that position resigned a few weeks ago.)
The application for a school certifying officer closes Wednesday. Clark’s Dean of Student Engagement Cath Busha said in an email that a hiring committee will then review applications, conduct interviews, and run reference and background checks before selecting a candidate.
The school is also in the process of hiring an interim, part-time school certifying officer.
“Right now, I’m doing all of the enrollment certifications for students to the VA so that they will get their benefits on time and as planned in the coming term,” Larson said. “The level of support just won’t be able to be the same without having the extra position there.”
Student concerns
Students took their concerns about reduced veterans center staffing to Larson, as well as Clark’s trustees and administration. Veteran students, including Tysson Dykes, spoke at multiple trustee meetings over the past three months.
Dykes, a U.S. Air Force veteran, is a sophomore studying cybersecurity. He’s also president of the Veterans Club.
“We, on several occasions, have helped prevent students from being homeless, helped ensure that students ate, that they had the proper computer equipment they needed for coursework and just built their sense of community,” Dykes said. “Then, we see those things going away and the support from the college dwindle.”
Dykes said he is transferring to Lower Columbia College in Longview because of uncertainty about Clark’s veterans center.
“The lack of communication and transparency definitely has been cause for alarm,” Dykes said. “The community that we’ve spent the past year building is being systematically chipped away, and it seems like nobody wants to talk about it.”
The students aren’t the only ones who voiced concerns. At the Dec. 4 meeting of Clark’s board of trustees, representatives from the Washington Public Employees Association said the college administration doesn’t do enough to ensure that grant-funded programs are sustainable over time.
Busha said that the Veterans Center of Excellence will remain open and serve students as it has for the past 10 years.
“The college’s commitment to our veterans remains strong,” she said. “The ending of this grant creates transitions in how and where some services are offered. It is understandable that students who built relationships with staff who won’t be working in the (Veterans Center of Excellence) will miss their personal connections.”
