A Sample of Best Practices to Support Veterans in Attending and Completing Engineering Degree Programs

This paper describes some sample best practices identified by three institutions, Virginia Tech, Kansas State University, and the University of San Diego to support the recruitment, transition, and retention of veterans in engineering degree programs. These three institutions represent a subset of the initial cadre of institutions receiving planning grants from the National Science Foundation to facilitate and support veterans in their pursuit of undergraduate and graduate engineering degrees, particularly when utilizing their "GI Bill" benefits. Best practices presented here include a website to co-locate veterans' campus resources virtually, a slide show "video" to highlight the mechanics of graduate school and finding the right program, models to help institutions give military veterans academic credit for military training, results of a regional institutional networking workshop on veterans issues, and strategies to better attract and recruit veterans to engineering degree programs.