U.S. News & World Report has ranked St. Joe’s one of the top four colleges in the nation for veterans in 2022-2023.
St. Joe’s Office of Veteran Services serves about 200 veterans taking classes on campus and enrolled in online programs, said Director Hank Gillen, who is responsible for overseeing campus-wide programs and other support services for veterans. The office’s mission, he said, is to ensure that “military-affiliated students have the best possible experience during their educational endeavors at St. Joe’s.”
“[We] make sure that they’re aware of the activities and the support that the Philadelphia area offers for student veterans and military-affiliated students while they’re here and also work with them on their career development opportunities for after they finish at St. Joe’s,” Gillen said.
Gillen said he is proud of St. Joe’s newest ranking.
“I think it’s a continuation of the tradition that Saint Joseph’s University has had since its founding, of supporting the military and those who have served or are going on to serve,” Gillen said.
David Million ’18, who served in the Air Force from 2008 to 2014, said his experience at St. Joe’s as a veteran was a positive one.
“It was a bit of an adjustment being 27 and a college freshman and feeling a bit out of place,” Million said. “But everyone, students, professors, office staff, were friendly and welcoming. It definitely made it feel easier to belong.”
Gillen, a West Point graduate who served in the United States Army for 14 years before becoming the director of the Office of Veteran Services at St. Joe’s, pointed out that some of St. Joe’s first students were veterans of the Civil War.
In 1918, the U.S. War Department created the Student Army Training Corps (S.A.T.C.), in which universities across the nation contracted with the government to offer military training. St. Joe’s students participated in that program, Gillen said.
After World War II, though, enrollment plummeted at St. Joe’s and other universities as young people put their education on hold to fight in the war. The GI Bill, formally known as the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, helped bring veterans back to school by offering a range of educational benefits.
“With the help of the benefits available for the GI Bill, the enrollment at Saint Joseph’s grew exponentially in the years right after the war,” Gillen said. “So there’s a connection that the university has had all the way through.
Owen Gilman, Ph.D, professor of English, remembered taking advantage of benefits offered to veterans in the Vietnam War era. Gilman, who teaches courses in war literature and whose most recent book is titled, “The Hell of War Comes Home: Imaginative Texts from the Conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq,” was in the U.S. Army in Vietnam.
“I went in once a month, filled out a piece of paper, and that was all I needed from the Veterans Administration (VA), but lots of veterans need more, a lot of stuff,” Gilman said. “Unfortunately, they don’t get it from the VA. So it’s great that St. Joe’s has a program that is lively.”
Since 1951, the university has also hosted an Air Force ROTC program.
“There’s been a connection to the military, and it’s great for us,” Gillen said. “I’m proud to be a part of keeping that tradition going.”
Ronald Dufresne, Ph.D., chair and professor of the management department, is involved in the office’s free Entrepreneurial Bootcamp Program, which sponsors disabled veterans. Dufresne, a veteran himself, worked as a military intelligence officer for the U.S. Army.
“[We] help these veterans think about their business plan, their strategy, funding, marketing, leadership, and really help them kind of hit the ground running in launching their own idea or to help them grow an existing idea that they already have,” Dufresne said.
St. Joe’s Office of Veteran Services is part of a network of both local and national universities working to provide an education to veterans, and the university works closely with the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University, Gillen said.
“We all share what we’re doing, and if somebody wants to borrow what one university is doing or another, we’re welcome to because it’s all about being the most helpful for the student veterans,” Gillen said.
Dufresne said the accomplishment of St. Joe’s being a “veteran friendly university” is important.
“To really invest in supporting our veterans really speaks to the core of who we are. We are men and women for and with others,” Dufresne said. “There’s no better way to do that than to support our veterans.”
