As you enter the Cerritos College Veterans Resource Center and turn to your left, you might catch sight of a row of university pennants hanging on the wall.
Each flag was given to the VRC by a military-affiliated student who transferred from Cerritos to that school.
The pennants signal a “mission accomplished” for a campus center dedicated to assisting veterans and other military-affiliated students to reach their academic goals, whatever those goals might be.
Located between the Student Center and the Falcon’s Nest, the Veterans Resource Center is a one-stop shop of services, advocacy and connection for military-affiliated students.
It serves three additional groups of students: military reservists, active-duty military and dependents of veterans, including spouses.
“The most satisfaction is definitely when I see my students transfer, graduate, and accomplish whatever it is they set out to do,” said Katie Mishler, VRC program facilitator.
“My first year, I had a student who went to Princeton. That was his goal. And I was super proud of him.”
The VRC, its staff and the division of Student Equity and Success oversee the center, making available several services and programs to military-affiliated students.
Those include academic counseling, certification of educational benefits administered by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, tutoring services, work-study opportunities and the Student Veterans Club.
Through internal and external partnerships, a veterans service officer provides further help to veterans and their families to understand and access VA benefits.
The VRC is also called upon to advocate for military-affiliated students, who make up about one percent of the Cerritos College student population.
Mishler said that challenges faced by military-affiliated students could range from the unique, such as navigating the complexities of the VA’s benefits system, to the more common, though no less frustrating or frightening, such as dealing with food or housing insecurity.
“Myself and our office really try to help as much as we can in getting them connected to the right place,”
Mishler continued, “Any day could look very different depending on what’s going on and what kinds of things come our way, student-wise.”
Giselle Aguilar, a pre-nursing student and Army reservist from Anaheim, appreciated the opportunity to connect with students who could identify with the possibility of a mission coming up and disrupting the semester.
But she also valued “just reconnecting with like-minded people that understand coming home from a deployment or coming home from a mission and getting back into civilian life.”
The keynote feature of the VRC is the camaraderie that military-affiliated students bring with them into the center and nurture through its spaces, programs and activities.
Lui Amador, Dean of Student Equity and Success and a Marine veteran, who oversees the VRC, said the center and its lounge serve as a safe space.
“Not necessarily around physical safety, but just being able to reconnect with others who also operated from a sense of community, a sense of mission, a sense of honor and obligation.”
