The Veteran Services relocated to the College Center

Posters of various U.S. military branches hang on the blue walls, six clocks tick away to time zones around the world, and a few moving boxes are left unopened in the new Veteran Services office, which recently relocated to a room on the southwest side of the College Center’s lower patio.

The move was a welcome one, according to Jerri Ellis of Veteran Services. “It’s very peaceful down here,” she said.

Right after Thanksgiving, Veteran Services moved from the financial aid area of Student Services. Before that, they were in a single cubicle across the hall in Admissions and Records.

“Always to a slightly bigger space,” said Ellis.
“It’s a lot quieter. A lot of combat veterans don’t like the crowds,” she said, noting that their location in financial aid often had a line of angry people with crying babies in front of the office. “It was an angry area,” she added. “It’s a safe haven away from that.”

On top of the loud setting, their office in financial aid was small, said Ellis. “Sometimes it was like Grand Central Station,” she said, as three or four work-study students and a crowd of veterans might fill the small room.

The new office sports tables and a few netbooks where vets can study and hang out, she said. Upon closer inspection, the room is decorated with tokens of gratitude from around the world. Hats from many branches of the military hang on the wall, a lifesaver buoy from a Navy ship sits on top of a shelf, and a piece of the Berlin Wall holds a spot next to Ellis’ computer monitor.

“The guys give them to me”, explained Ellis. To her, it’s a similar thing to when a child gives the parent a drawing he or she did and the parent puts it on the refrigerator.

The new office had been a storage room, and back in the 1960s, it was used as a hostel, said Ellis.

Veteran Services aids student veterans by connecting them with resources and benefits they are eligible for from their services. Ellis said some of the legislation can be thousands of pages long and the process can be very complex.
“We are here to support the veterans so that they are successful and can get their education and goals and move on,” she said.

“I feel very strongly that the (veterans) need to go to school,” said Ellis.
She estimated that MHCC has anywhere from 300-400 veterans attending school.

Ellis started working with Veteran Services in 2007, but has been at the school since 1999, moving through jobs such as part-time software trainer, advising and counseling and as a custodian.

One of her goals this school year is to create an event on June 2, 2012, for civilians and service personnel to mingle. It will be Military Veteran Appreciation Day.

“Everyone is invited,” she said.

Civilians can come look at the equipment and ask questions and get to know the veterans, she said. The equipment would mostly be from the National Guard, since guns aren’t allowed on campus. But all the branches will come out and represent themselves.

Ellis said this to be an educational event, since many civilians do not know much about what people in the military do — and the veterans get to show off their “toys,” Ellis said with a chuckle.

“This is eventually what we want to do,” she said about the event she hopes to create at the end of the school year.