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The military can teach you how to fly jets, operate armored vehicles, and jump from a perfectly good airplane. But for many veterans who may feel out of place or ill-equipped to make the return to civilian life, simply going home can be the toughest learning experience of all.

UNLV is addressing this challenge with a course created just for student veterans. This new class within the College of Education – a special section of COE 303 – is designed to help service members in academia find a sense of comfort, confidence, and belonging.

COE 303 is currently in its inaugural semester, and will be offered again in the fall. It’s a three-credit hour course for veterans transitioning from the service as transfer students with a minimum of 30 credits, fulfilling both the multicultural and second-year seminar general education requirements. 

Additionally, it is fully covered by the GI Bill. This is one of the few options for a course like this throughout academia, helping veterans acclimate to UNLV and giving them more tools to increase their odds of success.

“The college academic life with 30,000 students doing their own individual thing – it’s so different than anything you ever did in the military,” said Ross Bryant, an Army veteran and executive director of UNLV’s Military and Veteran Services Center. “You find yourself a little bit lost on your next career path, and that’s a struggle especially when you don’t know where you fit in, or how to express yourself.”

In the service, there’s an unspoken sense of understanding you develop amongst your similarly situated peers – one that doesn’t necessarily translate to the civilian world. A core tenet of COE 303 is finding that commonality in one another through communication and using that skill outside of the classroom.

“We’ve all had different paths in the service, but we don’t usually have to explain ourselves and our experiences,” said Cynthia Lam, a UNLV student and active-duty Army National Guard. “We’re all sharing, and that can be really hard for a lot of veterans. The value of the class is in the people.”

The course has a unique designed for veterans transitioning back into civilian life and attempts to explain the divide. Students learn about managing themselves in a discussion, the value of their participation, and how to open up about their time in the military.

Its curriculum focuses on debates, time management, and how to structure research papers, though a few projects are a bit more outside the box.

“It might sound funny, but some of our assignments are actually asking students to go to UNLV events,” said associate professor in residence Nathan Slife, who leads the course. “So, for example, our students got together and they all went to a basketball game.”

Slife says the goal is to establish a sense of belonging in the campus community, something that does not come easily for many transfer students.

“I was one of those kids who went to school and went home,” Lam said. “I didn’t interact with anyone or anything like that. But with this class, I actually feel like I’m living my college experience. The class made me comfortable being uncomfortable. It helped me try new things and I like that a lot.”

A similar course, COE 103, is being created for veterans transitioning from the service as freshman students and new to the college experience in the Fall 2023 semester. If you’re interested in learning more about COE 103 or 303, please feel welcome to send a message to nathan.slife@unlv.edu and ross.bryant@unlv.edu.