THE WAR AT HOME
Veterans set sights on education
UA program eases their transition; college life a world apart from tours in Iraq, Afghanistan
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In 2001, they were boosted by 46 percent, giving vets $37,224 to get a college education instead of $23,400.
Record levels of mental health problems have been identified among soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a study of about 2,300 soldiers conducted last fall by the Army Surgeon General's Office.
Soldiers with war-related mental health problems and those who saw friends killed in combat were twice as likely to abuse civilians by kicking or hitting them or destroying their property, the report said.
Soldiers serving multiple deployments didn't have enough time to recover from combat stress.
Editor's note: This story is part of a continuing series on the impact of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on Tucson and its residents. For the series, go to www.tucsoncitizen.com/warathome.
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"I cry myself to sleep sometimes," Ricky Tackett said a few days ago.
Richard "Ricky" Tackett was a paramedic on a middle-of-the-night rescue mission from Baghdad to Germany in October 2006 when he took the oxygen supply from one injured serviceman and gave it to another who needed it more.
The 27-year-old Air Force vet, who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder had helped transport 40,000 injured coalition troops to safety during his military service.
Now Tackett and four other local veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are scholarship students at the University of Arizona.
They're making the transition to college in a pilot program at UA's Teaching Center, 1600 E. First St.
About 1 million American military personnel have served in Iraq since the war started five years ago Wednesday, some deployed more than once. About half as many have served in Afghanistan. Thousands of those war vets are now civilians or inactive Reserve members loaded with tens of thousands of dollars in college tuition benefits they received as enlistment incentives.
More vets are expected to attend college in the coming years than did the vets of any previous war except World War II.
"They're different people than they were when they got out of high school," said Terri Riffe, director of the Teaching Center.
The center provides services and programs that support learning at the university.
This program was started with $15,000 in seed money from UA's vice president for instruction, Jerry Hogle.
A veterans group helped UA find fellow vets via the Internet because the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs wouldn't share its data with UA.
"What they're thinking about, reacting to and dealing with is so far beyond what the typical college student is dealing with," Riffe said.
The pilot program offers the veterans two courses. One teaches listening, learning, critical thinking and research skills. The other teaches how to cope with stress and ease anxiety.
In addition to the pilot program's two classes, the UA Veterans Services Office in the Office of the Registrar works with the national VA to help vets get their GI education benefits and maintain enrollment records.
Riffe said UA wants these veterans "to persist to a college degree, to transition from soldiers to civilians to graduates and have a successful civilian life."
She said the university wants to serve the special needs of the "all volunteer troops," many of whom came from lower socioeconomic levels.
"Only 8 percent of veterans (in the past 10 years) used all of their GI Bill benefits because they were not very successful students," Riffe points out.
Tackett, a high school graduate, says the UA classes are helping. Still, he is disabled by PTSD and haunted by war memories.
He recalls watching a soldier "turn color," bleeding to death aboard a C-17 evacuating him from Baghdad to Germany.
Another soldier, missing both forearms and strapped to a stretcher, told Tackett how an Iraqi insurgent methodically shot his arms off below the elbow with an AK-47.
Since he left the Air Force in October, Tackett has devoted his time to family duties and his studies.
The father of two - one a new arrival March 14 - is married to a nurse who works at the VA hospital here.
He is majoring in education and minoring in public safety. He is enrolled in two other classes at UA: psychology and government. And like the other vets in the program, he attends the two pilot classes for vets each Tuesday and Thursday at the UA Teaching Center.
Tackett said the classes are helping the vets adjust to college.
"It's not easy to sit in a classroom with college students and feel comfortable," he said.
VA research shows post-war social support helps vets who experience war zone stresses.
Two professors developed and co-teach the classes. Philip Callahan is an associate professor at UA and Michael Marks is a clinical psychologist at the Southern Arizona VA Health Care System who also treats vets who have PTSD.
Both are certified "resiliency trainers" who last year studied at the University of California- Irvine how to teach new vets "hardiness and resiliency" and how to learn.
In the pilot program's hardiness and resiliency class at the Teaching Center, the vets "can let a few words fly to express an intensity of emotions," said Kristopher Weatherly, associate director of the center. "The class has a 'support group feel' to it."
Riffe expects the pilot program to expand to 20 students at UA's Tucson campus and another 20 at UA's Sierra Vista campus in the fall semester.
The eight spots available this semester were limited to Tucson. Two veterans who signed up were redeployed before the classes began and one veteran re-enlisted after classes started.
The career goals of the veterans in the program vary.
Xavier Brito, 36, a father of two, plans to study architecture. He works full time for a local retailer and attends UA full time.
Ryan McCalley is a 2001 graduate of Mountain View High School, which has lost five of its alumni to the war - the most of any high school in the Tucson area.
He served four years in the 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines, part of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit, and was among the first troops across the Kuwaiti border into Iraq in the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
McCalley served in a rifle squadron that flew into Kuwait to prepare for the ground invasion of Iraq.
"We took over two port facilities in southern Iraq so the rest could come in and get supplies in," he said.
McCalley served his four-year military contract and got out in July 2005.
A month later, he enrolled at the University of Arizona. The veteran was living in a dormitory when he "had an issue," which he didn't specify.
Realizing he needed help, McCalley called the VA and was seen right away. Though he got help and finished the semester, he ended up dropping out.
Now the former corporal is back at the university, enrolled in two courses and in the veterans pilot program.
Going back to college is easier this time.
"It definitely does help being in the same room with people who've been through similar things," he said. "It's kind of like your niche of friends.
"We're all a little older" than most college students, he added.
Riffe said the vets "don't do well trying to reintegrate with the typical same-age college student. Their life experience is so different."
"The type of war it is, the type of enemy it is" make returning to civilian life a challenge, she said. "There is a high incidence of PTSD in vets coming back from the Middle East."
Its effort to help veterans succeed in college is one way UA is keeping up with changing times, tapping into a new college population, Riffe said.
The program aims to help veterans who were "perhaps not college bound" learn the research and critical reading skills they need to do well in college, she said.
Some veterans "who made the sacrifice to serve their country feel ripped off" when they get back home and find themselves "without the skills they thought would help them when they got out," she said.
"Given their sacrifices and their service, we are trying to intervene and provide support many of them had not considered before."
Weatherly said the pilot program helps vets see they have important usable skills they learned in the military, no matter what their job was.
"We show them that the decision-making and leadership skills they learned are transferable into life and academic success," he said. "They need some help making that transition."
"We can kind of forget the war is going on," Riffe said, "but they can't."
Editor's note: This story is part of a continuing series on the impact of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on Tucson and its residents. For the series, go to www.tucsoncitizen.com/warathome.
What's this? Could this be? A University that has an organizational STRUCTURE? I wonder if corporations do the same thing... oh wait, they do. Speak to executives that have served in the military. They will tell you that it's similar. In fact, your uniform in the executive world is the business suit and I'm sure being an executive is a lot more than selling used cars and hawking insurance.
There are many schools that have instructors that can't teach worth a damn and those instructors have not been in the military. Maybe you can take a couple of college courses that would help you understand the overall effects of the environment on a given culture. Sadly, I'm not surprised that individuals like yourself exist. You really should not generalize like that. I'm sure that for every instructor you know that has served in the military that has done a poor job, I can name a couple of instructors that have not served any time that have done just as poorly if not worse.