Continuing with last year’s speaker series, NSU’s Military Affairs and the Veterans Resource Center (VRC) will host a virtual speaker series on Thursdays at 12:30 p.m. over Zoom. In collaboration with a variety of NSU affiliated departments, such as the Center for Academic and Professional Success (CAPS) and NSU’s Health Professions Division (HPD), this speaker series hopes to guide all NSU students, with a focus on military-affiliated students, with information and resources on a variety of professional, academic and personal goals.
There are roughly 700 students on NSU’s campus that are considered military-affiliated, meaning they are active-duty or currently serving, they are a veteran who served or they are a dependent of someone who has served or is currently serving.
“The thinking behind this speaker series is to educate and inform our military-affiliated and veteran students on what resources are available to them at NSU and throughout the local community. When you are in the military or a dependent of the military, you have a hub of resources available to you, but once you are out of the military, it’s hard to find a centralized location for information. That is why we are bringing it to them via our speaker series,” said Kelly Callahan, VRC coordinator.
According to Callahan, the VRC tries to gauge the students’ wants and needs, basing the speaker series around those topics. As Callahan explained, a population of military-affiliated students are majoring or looking towards pursuing higher education in the health professions, which is why the VRC focused on an HPD collaboration to help students through that process.
Some highlights of this series include a campus-wide department networking workshop on Jan. 28, a resume writing presentation hosted by NSU CAPS on Feb. 11 and a VA education benefits presentation by Maribeth Munroe, assistant director of NSU’s financial aid shared services and the Veterans Benefits Program, on March 11.
As Munroe explained, this series provides an opportunity for students who use their veteran education benefits to meet NSU’s School Certifying Officials (SCO) and gain an understanding of the process for reporting enrollment to the department of veteran affairs. The series also provides students the ability to ask questions about the different types of educational benefits that are available to them and learn how to communicate with these employees in the future.
Continuing a staple from last year’s speaker series, Albert Williams, chair and associate professor in the H. Wayne Huizenga College of Business and Entrepreneurship, will host a Personal Finance 101 presentation focused on meeting the needs of military-affiliated students in terms of financial understanding.
“We thought the best thing we could do for the veterans on campus was to give them some financial literacy. Based on the financial literacy course FIN 2000, we are giving them a one to two-hour presentation where we go through different topics that they would like more information on or knowledge about in terms of their financial decisions. It’s a blend of both teaching them how to manage [their] money now, save for retirement and how to set realistic and specific goals like buying a house within a budget and time frame. These are people who have had jobs and careers in the military and by sharing their life experiences, challenges and successes, we can learn from each other. It’s a very key component that makes this series so unique,” said Williams.
Students interested in any of these lectures featured in this speaker series are encouraged to visit this Zoom link to attend.
