Plymouth State University students who serve or served in the military now have a “home base” to which they can turn for help with everything from emotional distress to integrating their academic and military schedules.
A revamped Veterans Office is open in the Hartman Union Building, headed by Jacqueline “Jacqui” Nelson, interim coordinator of military services and teaching lecturer in history.
“I found out last spring we didn’t have a singular person that could help our military students,” says Nelson, adding that a veterans office had existed in the past but was never fully staffed. “We have members of our Registrar’s Office who could help, and a counseling center that helped with personal issues, but it was scattered across campus.”
Nelson campaigned to establish a full-time position to support military students and quickly won the support of the administration. Some 35 students representing all five branches of the military have now visited the office, according to Nelson, and new ones arrive weekly.
Nelson stocks the office with snacks and coffee, provides a lending library of her own books, maintains an office Instagram account, and posts a daily trivia question for students to answer. She also offers guidance or referrals for military students in matters ranging from emotional issues to grant applications to coordination of schedules.
The length of deployments and trainings “can vary widely,” she explains, with the result that some military students in the past had to drop out or take incompletes because of classroom absences.
Kevin Briggs ’19, a seven-year Army veteran now taking prerequisite classes to start a master’s program at PSU, says some service members had to drop classes last year because of deployments. “Those guys essentially ended up deferring for a whole year,” he says. “It would have been great to have an advocate at the school at the time so they still could have continued. I think going forward it will make a big difference.”
Nelson says a University policy is now in place allowing military students who are gone for a prolonged deployment to withdraw from a class or take an incomplete and finish the course later. “Part of my mission helping further educate our campus community about what is required of military students and the need for flexibility,” she says.
Nelson has established a Green Zone program, in which volunteer faculty and staff post a green sticker on their doors indicating they will provide “an open ear and an open heart” to military students experiencing difficulty. Roughly 50 have taken the 44-minute training for the program. Another goal is to help military students connect with one another, and she has scheduled a pizza night and other meetings to bring them together.
Haley Gray ’25, who served in the Army for four years and started at PSU in 2021 as an older student, looks forward to such gatherings, saying “It’ll be great to meet somebody who’s not 18 and living in the dorm, just to have something in common with someone else.”
National Guard member Shelby Demingway ’26 urges other military students to consider using the Veterans Office. “Don’t get stressed out about anything having to do with school because this place has an office that makes sure your school and service don’t conflict and if it does, they can help you,” she says.
Nelson teaches courses on War in US History and on the Cold War. She has no military background but says, “I’ve always been fascinated by it (war), not only by the idea that we as humans go to war but what a monumental task it is for those we ask to undertake it.”
She says she hopes to get the Veterans Office firmly established on campus and eventually see it taken over by a service veteran. “I think our military students are the epitome of our University motto, ‘that I may serve,’” she says.
