FDU ranks high among veteran-friendly schools. Several veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan tell how the University is helping them build new lives.
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Harold “Cap” Hollenbeck, BA'61 (R)
yan Enriquez, BA’08 (T), MPA’10 (T), enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve at age 17, just before the 9/11 attacks. He was called to Iraq in 2003, but crushed his left hand in an accident and was sent home later that year. While still in the reserves, he attended Bergen Community College, transferring to Fairleigh Dickinson in 2005.
“School was hard for me at first because every month I’d have weekend drills to get ready for Iraq. After deployment, I was still in two different worlds — military and college. But when I was discharged [in 2007] and didn’t have to worry about being redeployed, I could concentrate on academics.” His grade point ratio shot up to 3.8 and he quickly finished his bachelor’s in criminal justice and then a master’s degree in public administration (MPA).
While Enriquez, who is now studying toward an MBA, doesn’t qualify for the Yellow Ribbon program, he says that FDU has helped him by offering degree programs that cater to working veterans’ needs, with online, weekend and night classes. Currently employed by a southern New Jersey technology staffing company, he hopes to be in a position some day to interview and hire veterans himself. “I know the work ethic of veterans, and one day I hope to provide an opportunity to another veteran,” he says.
Jeffrey Dunn, BA’10 (M), entered the Army a year after high school and stayed for seven years of active duty and 18 months in the National Guard. “Basically, the military helped me grow up and find myself,” he says. A cook at a Vermont resort just after high school, he served in a combat arms unit and as a food service sergeant, respectively, in tours of Iraq in 2003 and 2005.
When Dunn came home to New Jersey in 2006, he blazed through the County College of Morris with good grades, earning an associate degree in business administration in 2008. An FDU transfer scholarship and a Phi Beta Kappa scholarship “really brought school to a reasonable price range,” he says. “Then the new GI Bill came in and made life a lot simpler.”
Now he has a Yellow Ribbon scholarship, and the combination of fully covered tuition and housing allowance lets him focus on finishing his bachelor of arts degree in individualized studies. Dunn wants to continue at the College at Florham to earn an MBA and perhaps eventually start a small business. (He may even be able to take advantage of Veterans Launching Ventures, a free eight-week course offered by the Rothman Institute of Entrepreneurship in FDU’s Silberman College of Business for veterans who want to start their own small businesses.)
n the meantime, Dunn and Enriquez are organizing FDU Veterans Associations on both campuses. They see the associations as a way for student veterans to help each other through the transition to college life, and for alumni veterans, faculty and staff to provide support as well.
Veterans face a cultural shift on campus, says licensed psychologist Stefanie Ulrich, director of FDU’s Center for Psychological Services, who knows well the issues that trouble returning veterans, having counseled dozens of them at the center. A contract with the New Jersey Department of Military and Veterans Affairs funds the center’s free weekly therapy sessions for veterans and family members who have readjustment issues or post-traumatic stress disorder. (The center is also developing a group program for wives of deployed troops as well as a play-therapy group for children of returning veterans.)
“Veterans may fear that the campus isn’t going to befriendly to veterans,” Ulrich says. Veterans — who are inevitablyasked by someone if they have killed anyone — arewary of the way others perceive them, and coming fromthe highly structured environment of the military, many alsohave trouble at first with so much free time. “One fellowtold me he had never used a planner before,” she says.
Dunn says part of his motivation for organizing the Veterans Association is knowing another veteran at FDU who had trouble with the transition to college and dropped out. “I don’t want to see a veteran who feels he or she cannot adapt and belong,” he says.
As for himself, “I’ve always had a good experience here,” he says. “Everybody I’ve identified myself to as a veteran has usually thanked me for my service. The biggest step the school has taken is hiring AJ. He really is such a friendly face for new veterans to encounter. I’ve already come across a student who chose this school over other universities because of how veteran-oriented we’ve become.”
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FDU Magazine is published twice yearly by the Office of Communications and Marketing, Fairleigh Dickinson University, 1000 River Road, H-DH3-14, Teaneck, N.J. 07666.
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J. Michael Adams, President; Richard Reiss, Senior Vice President for University Advancement; Angelo Carfagna, Assistant Vice President for University Advancement and Communications; Okang McBride, Director of Alumni Relations; Carol Kuzen Black, Director of Publications/Senior Editor; Rebecca Maxon, Editor and Web Designer; Nina Ovryn, Art Director
Contributors: Nicholas Baldwin, Scott Giglio, Katharine Loeb, Andrew McKay, Tom Nugent, Melissa Payton
Photo/Illustration Credits: David Brabyn, Peter Byron, Benoit Cortet, Gerard DuBois, Jaclyn Chua, Danielle Drombar, John Emerson, ETH-Bibliothek Zurich Image Archive, William Kennedy, Dan Landau, Library of Congress, Librarything, Caroline Malia, Craig Mourton, National Portrait Gallery, Art Petrosemolo, Nick Romanenko, Anassa Tullouch
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