The Veterans Club recently became a Student Veterans of America (SVA) chapter on Feb. 22 in an effort to help student veteran’s transition from service life to student life.

Its mission is to provide military veterans with resources, support, and advocacy needed to succeed in high education and following graduation, according to Student Veterans of America’s website.

 Student Veterans of America was founded in 2008 and has over 1,300 chapters and over 440,000 members. It provides opportunities for veterans to gain valuable lessons and leadership skills.

SVA “provides extra help with scholarships, grants and other kinds of funding. They partner with a lot of big organizations and brands like the VFW,” said Ryan Lewand, President of the Veterans Club.

 The Veterans Club affiliation with SVA allows the club to network with other veteran organizations across the United States to gain practices and ideas.

“I think it also brings a sense of belonging to something larger than that of Kent State,” said Dawn Plug, assistant director for the Center for Adult and Veteran Services (CAVS).

The rationale for the Veterans Club becoming a SVA chapter is “for the added resources and benefits to not only get more people interested in the club but to provide more resources to our club members such as scholarships, leadership summits and skills for later in life,” Lewand said.

The Veterans Club looked at becoming part of the SVA chapter a couple of years ago but were unhappy with some of the guidelines for becoming an SVA chapter. 

“Recently, we’ve had a new group of veterans that came in and wanted to look at SVA again, and since a lot of those pieces that were concerning historically have gone away, we decided that now was the best time to join,” Plug said.

For more information on the Veterans Club affiliating with Student Veterans of America, visit Kent’s community bulletin board, Patch.