A University of Michigan program wants to prepare military veterans for college life. It’s called VetCoRe. It stands for "veteran college readiness."
The week long program gives veterans a taste of university life and helps them prepare college applications. Cassie Michael is VetCoRe’s program director. She says the vets she’s met have the ability to go to top tier universities, but sometimes they just lack the confidence.
"A lot of vets will separate from the military, they'll go back home, they'll go to their local community college, and they don't really know what to do from there," Michael said. "And so, that's what we are really trying help with."
Michael, along with Phil Larson, program director for U-M’s Veteran and Military Services, and Micheal Hartman, who oversees transfer student recruitment for LSA, started the program.
The program’s website reads:
“We appreciate and honor the service you have provided our country, and we welcome the diversity of thought, opinion, life experience, and leadership skills that military veterans bring to our campus community. We ask and challenge you to make Michigan a part of your future. This place, this community and this degree can be yours!”
The program says it helps vets build academic skill, listen to lectures from top professors, write in workshops, and critically read. Cassie says that working on the vets application to get into the University of Michigan is their biggest focus, but then also establishing a plan of action for once they are at the school - like discussions on how to successfully transition from military to civilian life.
"The veteran community is very dedicated, they're very motivated, they're very resilient, and they will do anything to achieve whatever objective that they have set for themselves," Michael says.
A couple vets interested in engineering and another interested in business school, Michael says. The program matched them with people that work in admissions for those schools to help advise them on their application.
The first group of veterans went through the program last month. Michael says some people left saying they’ll see her at U of M in the fall or spring semester.
Office of New Student Programs and Transfer Initiative through the University of Michigan's college of LSA funded the program.
For more information on the program, visit its website.
