Center helps student veterans with college plans

GAINESVILLE, FLA. — A University of Florida program is helping military veterans succeed in college.

The Gainesville Sun reports that the Collegiate Veterans Success Center serves about 600 University of Florida students who receive military benefits. A full-time Veterans Affairs counselor has been assigned to the campus since January.

The center is part of the national VetSuccess on Campus program that began in 2009 at the University of South Florida.

The University of Florida center allows student veterans to access the VA benefits system, health care system and the university school system.

The idea behind the program is to make it easier for veterans to navigate through higher education.

Military Times reported last year that the Veterans Affairs Department was expanding the number of schools participating in the VetSuccess on Campus program, bringing VA counselors to more than 60 new locations this fall.

While the program is based on college campuses, the participating VA counselors can offer help on more than just education-related issues.

Counselors can help vets learn about and apply for benefits they might not know about, and they also maintain close ties to VA medical facilities and Vet Centers.

In addition to help with academic issues, the program provides an additional and more convenient “entree into the VA” for student veterans, opening up a world of VA benefits to people who would not go to stand-alone VA centers and thus could have been shut out, a VA official said last year.

One student veteran, Caleb Archie, told the Gainesville Sun that when transferred to the University of Florida from a smaller college, he was overwhelmed and confused. The VA benefits counselor assigned to the school, Charlotte Kemper, took him to the financial aid office, the Collegiate Veterans Success Center and to the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, where she was helping him apply for work study, the Sun reported.

Benefits counselors can access the VA benefits system, health care system and a school’s system to help student veterans with any issue they encounter.