Sunday, Jul. 05, 2009

Teacher gives veterans a break

CLEVELAND -- In the college chemistry class he taught at Cleveland State University, a student back home from duty in Kosovo described to John Schupp what it was like to be a veteran on campus. She felt like an outcast, she said.

The comment stirred Schupp -- who had always admired soldiers' sacrifices to protect people they'd never met. He was not a veteran himself, and even said the thought of dying terrified him.

He starting asking around. On America's college campuses, he learned, the young woman's reaction was not unusual. Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are being swallowed up by the crowds. In class, many scan the windows for snipers and warily size up fellow students. Set adrift from the military, they can grow discouraged and disappear.

A history buff, Schupp pored over books and dissected statistics about veterans, searching for an answer in the numbers. He read about the 7.8 million World War II veterans who used their GI bill benefits to earn college diplomas. He prodded military officials for facts.

Today, just 8 percent of veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan are fully using the $36,000 for college guaranteed by the GI bill, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. The military doesn't track graduation rates.

The veterans of the "greatest generation" had proved it could be done, he thought. What was going wrong?

Slowly, the big idea lit up his brain. The proof was in the past. In 1945, veterans outnumbered everyone else on campus.

"They succeeded as a group, as a unit," he says excitedly, as if sharing a secret. He leans forward, gripping his coffee mug. "So I'm recreating the same thing that happened then."

What he needed to do seemed simple: Form a military unit within the classroom. He needed to disguise counseling sessions as English and Math 101. The unit would survive together, no soldier left behind.

If veterans took classes together -- without other students around -- they could help each other through the transition to civilian life.

"So I said let's change the environment, see what happens," he says. "Experiment."

Every student in his classroom has served in the military. Most are in their 20s. Many were part of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Some came because their wives or girlfriends told them to. For others, it was word of mouth.

Now in its third semester, the program that started with so few has swelled to more than 100. The remarkable thing, Schupp says, is that the veterans need only a semester or two before they're ready to join the masses.

They've hit some stumbling blocks. A class on Iraqi history -- Schupp's idea -- didn't go over too well. Not a single veteran cared to spend time studying that country's troubled past.

"Guys were walking out," Schupp acknowledges.