At 39 years old, U.S. Marine Corps veteran Jennifer Croker didn’t have much in common with her fellow students when she returned home to Iowa City last year and enrolled at the University of Iowa.

Croker, who served for 20 years in the Marine Corps, says the age and experience gap between her and her fellow students made transitioning from the military to a civilian life an isolating experience. Fortunately for Croker and other military-affiliated UI students, a program exists to help make that switch from active duty to civilian and academic life go as smoothly as possible. Peer Advisors for Veteran Education (PAVE) pairs existing student veterans with incoming military-affiliated students for help and support.

PAVE was crucial to Croker’s success on campus.

“If it wasn’t for PAVE or University of Iowa Veterans Affairs, I would be just drowning and have no one to talk to and no social interaction,” she says.

PAVE was founded at the University of Michigan and has spread to 37 campuses across the country. Matthew Miller, program director for Military and Veteran Student Services, said when he arrived on the UI campus in March 2017, the program had been without leadership for about five months and only a few students were involved.

“One of my first priorities was helping to rebuild that program,” Miller says. “It can be a program that supports a lot of different students in a lot of different ways.”

As luck would have it, in June 2017, Tiffany Baker-Strothkamp, a nine-year U.S. Army veteran, arrived on campus, as well. Baker-Strothkamp came to the UI to earn a master’s degree in rehabilitation and mental health counseling with a focus on helping veterans transition to the civilian world. She is now the team leader for PAVE.

“I kind of came into Matt’s office and said, ‘Hey, I would really like to be useful. I would really like to not only connect with other people on campus but make sure other people are connecting on campus,’” she says. “And he said, ‘Hey, we have this wonderful program. I think you would be a great fit for it.’ So, I really started working with him, with the outreach program at the University of Michigan, and I just kind of took it from there.”

Baker-Strothkamp—who earlier this year received a $10,000 Veteran of Foreign Wars Sport Clips Help a Hero scholarship for her efforts to help veterans transition to civilian life—says PAVE can help with all aspects of collegiate life. Incoming military-affiliated students are automatically enrolled in the program but have the independence to rely on PAVE as much or as little as they wish. Baker-Strothkamp says PAVE advisors can offer advice on which classes to take, scholarships to pursue, or recommendations on where to live off campus. Whenever possible, mentees are paired with mentors in the same academic program. PAVE also helps with basic tutoring, Baker-Strothkamp says.

“We help them navigate,” she says. “The academic world is a very different world than the civilian or military world.”

Beginning this year, PAVE advisors will receive mental health first-aid training to help them recognize mental health issues students might be facing and refer them to the appropriate resources, Miller says. That training was made possible through a $6,000 grant from Rockwell Collins.

“PAVE gives the students another ally here on campus,” Miller says.

While the university offers a variety of support programs for all students, Baker-Strothkamp and Miller say PAVE is a valuable resource that helps veterans connect with other veterans for their various needs.

“It’s a peer program,” Baker-Strothkamp says. “It’s, ‘Hey, we’ve been there, we’ve done it, we understand what you’re going through.’ When you have that veteran-to-veteran connection, the fear of ‘maybe they’re not going to understand what I’m saying or what I’m trying to say’ is lowered instantly because we have this common language.

“We have always been a family unit,” Baker-Strothkamp adds. “When you join the military, that’s something that is instilled in you, that these people have your back and you have theirs. That’s part of it.”

Since Miller’s arrival, PAVE has grown considerably at the UI. Miller says there were only five contacts between students and their advisors during the 2017 spring semester. During the fall 2017 semester, there were 83.

After her first year at the UI, Croker calls PAVE an invaluable resource. Now she’s one of the mentors offering advice to incoming student veterans.

“I’m able to help more on the life skills side of it,” she says. “I can help out with a little bit here and there. The more I’m here, the more I can help on the education side. That’s something to look forward to.” 

If you would like to become involved with PAVE, contact Matthew Miller at matthew-t-miller@uiowa.edu.

Learn more about services for military-affiliated and veteran students.