Operation Education
Written by Diana McGonigle
Tom Prewitt was a student at the University of Idaho in his third year studying wildlife resources. He needed help for childcare for his 10- month-old boy Logan while his wife Andrea worked as a registered nurse at a family clinic in downtown Moscow, Idaho. He heard about a new scholarship program last fall through the local VFW, where he serves as chaplain.
“I knew it was a scholarship for me; I deal with pain every day of my life,” Prewitt said. “I heard that the scholarship was established for disabled vets from Iraq and Afghanistan to pursue their education and not feel that their disability hinders them.” Prewitt served in the U.S. Army and was deployed to Kandahar, Afghanistan, from January 2002 through June 2002. A heavy construction equipment operator for the Army’s 101st Airborne Division, Prewitt and his unit were responsible for reconstructing and maintaining the runway in Kandahar in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Their task was crucial to Operation Anaconda, the first large-scale battle in Afghanistan to involve a large number of U.S. conventional forces that participated in direct combat activities.
The 101st is an air assault division that can deploy anywhere within 36 hours. Prewitt and his unit ensured some 1,700 air-lifted troops had an operable air field from which to take off and land. He was injured prior to deployment, and deployment just made the injury worse. He sustained permanent disability in his knees, three torn ligaments in his left ankle and a weak right ankle. His injuries hamper day-to-day activities. Physical training “had blown out one of my ankles and I had to have it reconstructed. I also have a weak joint in my other ankle,” Prewitt said.” I was continuously re-injuring it all of the time and spraining it. My knees also. The military first diagnosed it as ‘runner’s knee’ but they diagnose a lot of stuff like that, and afterwards I had a specialist look at it and he thought it was degenerative joint disease. There’s not really a clear diagnosis on that one. “My service was right at the end of my time in the Army, so as soon as I got back from overseas I was discharged,” he continued. “So it was kind of a roller coaster kind of event. And it took a while for the VA to pick me up. It was about a year or so later before I got treatment for my injuries. “I’d served my time and was moving to Idaho for college in 2004. The day we moved, I received a recall notice,” Prewitt said. “I was required to report for duty because my injury apparently didn’t meet the qualifications to be exempted from the recall.” Upon reporting for duty, he finally was able to meet with a surgeon who exempted him from active duty; he completed his commitment to the Army in April 2006. He was able to return to the University of Idaho, an institution he’d planned to attend since his youth. Prewitt is from Boyd, a small town in Wisconsin. “I was already accepted at a university back in Wisconsin prior to my enlistment in the Army, and I also always wanted to join the military so I took it as a stepping stone but I also planned on following that course of action. I planned on serving my four years and then going on to college.
“I’d heard about Idaho’s wildlife program while in high school,” he said. “If I attended the local community college for wildlife management, which is what I planned to do, there were only three transfer schools in the nation I could attend to complete my bachelor’s degree.” He applied for the Operation Education scholarship in December 2006 and received funds to help cover his educational costs for spring semester 2007, his final semester at the university. “Money was tight for a while, so it was a relief to get it,” he said. Prewitt is taking four classes with two labs. He lives within a mile of the university, so he can walk to classes. “I really can’t run anymore, especially for long distances or anything,” he said. “Prolonged standing or sitting affects me a lot. I need to move, but too much is not good. Also on uneven terrain, which is kind of a down side to my career choice, because I’ll spend a lot of time in the field. I’ve just got to deal with it.
“It gets demanding at times. Nothing I can’t handle.”
This May his wife and son will watch him commence a new chapter in life when he receives his degree. “I’d say my only challenge was balancing my time between family and school and work. I try to do it all.”
STARTING A PROGRAM
In June 2006, the University of Idaho launched the Operation Education Scholarship, a program designed to help veterans who have been severely injured in service since September 11, 2001. The scholarship program provides financial and social support as well as other resources, such as tuition, fees and books, on-campus housing, transportation, medical assistance, child care, adaptive equipment, tutoring and mentorship at its Moscow campus. The university also has plans to partner with corporations to offer internships and assist in job placement. Prewitt was one of the first recipients of the new program.
Dr. Karen White is the chair of Operation Education and also is the wife of University of Idaho President Timothy White. She heads a large volunteer committee made up of people from all over campus: student services, the ROTC programs, marketing, development, financial aid, legal, faculty and student government. “We worked very hard as a committee throughout the spring and into the summer of 2006 to formulate what the scholarship would be, who we were going to offer it to, what the restrictions were going to be, how much money could we afford to give and under what circumstances we would award it,” White said. The official announcement of the Operation Education scholarship program was in June 2006 in Washington, D.C. “Now our focus is primarily on recruitment of eligible students and fundraising to support the program. There is a smaller committee that evaluates the applications and makes the actual scholarship awards.”
The initial idea for the scholarship program came from one of the university’s development officers. She was in Washington, D.C., visiting her daughter, who volunteers with an organization called Helping Our Heroes, a foundation that provides funding, services and assistance to veterans wounded in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. She went to a holiday party hosted by Helping Our Heroes at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and was touched and deeply moved by the spirit and the drive of the men and women undergoing rehabilitation there. She came home and said “What can the University of Idaho do to help these folks in some way?”
Karen White was a natural choice to chair the scholarship program. “My personal interest in the Operation Education scholarship program is twofold,” White said. “First, my professional background is physical therapy and advocacy for people with disabilities. So naturally I am interested anytime the University of Idaho is able to offer assistance or new programs for persons who have some type of disability. Secondly, these scholarships are a way for the University to acknowledge and thank the servicemen and women who have sacrificed so much for our country and for our freedom.”
She went on to say that the people of the State of Idaho are strong supporters of the military. “We have a high percentage of people involved in the military relative to our population. It’s a state that really supports them, so this was a nice way for the University of Idaho to say ‘thank you’ to servicemembers from our state and across the country.”
Operation Education began accepting applications in July 2006. “Right away there were several inquiries about the scholarship, but there were no completed applications submitted for the fall semester, which started just a few weeks later”, White said. “We did receive two applications for the spring semester, which began in January 2007. They were both qualified applicants and we were pleased to offer assistance to both of them.” As time goes by White anticipates that they will receive more applications per semester. She also predicts that the level of injury sustained by the applicants will increase. “At this point there just aren’t that many injured servicemembers out there who have completed their rehabilitation and are at the point in their adjustment back to civilian life that they’re thinking about going to school. We anticipate that number to increase dramatically over the next several months to years as the men and women who are on active duty now or who are seeking rehabilitation right now will be ready to pursue higher education.
“Another reason our first applicant pool was small is that we focused our initial recruitment efforts here in the state of Idaho,” White added. “Idahoans are our priority, but Idaho is not a highly populated state, so there aren’t many people within the state who qualify for the scholarship…I guess that’s actually a good thing” she said with a smile. But Operation Education is not just for Idahoans. Any severely wounded veteran (or spouse) who is interested in attending the University of Idaho to pursue a college degree can apply for the scholarship, although preference may be given to students from within the state. “These men and women have plenty of challenges ahead of them, and earning a college degree will not be easy. The goal of Operation Education is to remove as many barriers as possible for as many injured veterans as possible, but the reality is we are a small program with a finite amount of resources. We actually fear the day when we have more applicants than we can fund, that will be a very difficult time for us”, said White.
WHAT THE PROGRAM OFFERS
A unique aspect of the scholarship is that it is very individualized. It is designed to provide whatever that student needs in order to be successful in attaining a college degree. “Because of their injuries, the scholarship recipients are typically eligible for Vocational Rehabilitation [through the VA], thus they generally get tuition and books paid for,” White said. “But what they don’t receive through vocational rehab, and where we can be helpful, is assistance with housing, computers and software, tutoring, classroom accommodations, and transportation around campus. Maybe they are still going through physical therapy and they need help with their co-pays or maybe they need help with child care while attending class. Operation Education is designed to fill in the gaps from their other benefits, and those gaps are different for every student. What they need, we try to provide. We work with each student individually to determine the amount of support that is appropriate, and we can modify that amount from year to year if needs change. For example, one of our scholarship recipients is still technically on active duty in the Guard and he’s in the process of getting discharged and getting his VA benefits up and going. Because he wanted to start school this term, we are funding him at a much more generous level right now than we probably will need to in the future. But that’s the beauty of this scholarship, it’s flexible and individualized. Because of our immediate ability to help, this student is working towards his degree, not sitting at home waiting for his VA benefits to kick in.
“The Operation Education committee wants to make sure each scholarship package is tailored to meet the needs of the student, and that’s not just financial. Part of the focus of the scholarship program is to provide social and community support as well. They are working to develop a welcoming environment at the university and within the local community that will help the veterans feel comfortable and be successful in adjusting to civilian life and to being a student. The University of Idaho Students Services staff is highly involved with each scholarship recipient. Student Services is there to arrange such things as tutoring, accommodations for a vision or hearing impairment such as an interpreter or a note taker, special parking permits, or counseling.
“We also try to buddy up each student and their family with another student on campus in similar circumstances”, said White. “It may be another veteran, or a student in our ROTC program, or someone in the community. Just so there is someone kind of looking out for them and answering those important questions like who’s the best dentist in town, how do you get to the post office, and where’s the movies….those kind of things. Again, the goal of the Operation Education scholarship program is to remove barriers, and helping our recipients get comfortable and feel like they’re settled is important. In our view the social support is just as important and appreciated as the financial part of the scholarship.”
SPOUSES
The program is also open to veterans’ spouses in order to provide educational opportunities for those who may need to financially support a disabled veteran. The program will even offer assistance to both a veteran and spouse at the same time, if both are interested in pursuing a college degree.
“It’s very flexible and it’s one of the few really good benefits available to spouses at this time.” White said. “I understand that a common complaint among veterans is that there’s just not much available for spouses when they need that type of support.”
FINANCING THE PROGRAM
The Helping Our Heroes Foundation played a major role in the establishment of the Operation Education scholarship program. Not only was it one of their events that led to the initial idea to create this scholarship, but they also provided some of the initial funding and have pledged continuing support. However, the vast majority of the support for the Operation Education scholarship has come from University of Idaho alumni and friends who have been overwhelmingly supportive of the scholarship. They’ve also received strong support from the military community. Their next step is to seek financial support from corporations and foundations. The program has received more than $120,000 in private gifts as of February 21, 2007. They also have several community partners who have offered to provide a wide variety of pro bono professional services to the scholarship recipients.
“Helping our Heroes is one donor; they gave initial funding to get us started and that gave us the confidence that we could do this.” White said. “But most of our funding has come from donors and alums of the University of Idaho, as well as people who just chose to support this program. Most of them have some kind of a military connection or come from a military background, so it has touched a chord with them. Many donations have been modest, while some have been very generous, but we have received support from an amazing number of people. I know because I personally have written a thank you note to every donor, and I’ve written a lot of thank you notes.”
THE UNIVERSITY
The University of Idaho was founded in 1889 and is the state’s flagship higher education institution and its principal graduate education and research university. It is the only institution in the state earning the Carnegie Foundation ranking for high research activity. It offers 106 degree options in nine colleges. The university awards bachelor’s, master’s, Ph.D., juris doctorate and specialists degrees. It has an enrollment of more than 12,000 and more than 2,000 faculty and staff. White said that the university is the first institution to offer this kind of comprehensive scholarship program and support to recently wounded veterans. “A final mission of the Operation Education scholarship program is to encourage other colleges and universities to establish similar scholarship programs at their own institutions. Once we get this up and running and we are confident that what we’re offering is what these students need to be successful, then we are committed to sharing the blueprint of what we’re doing with every other college and university across the country, in hope that they will do the same thing.
“If anybody else wants to establish an Operation Education scholarship program on their own campus that would be terrific. We would love it if other schools would use our ideas and basic parameters and develop their own programs. We understand that we are not large enough to provide scholarships for all of the potential applicants and potential recipients out there. It would be great if every college and university in the country had an Operation Education scholarship on their own campus so that students could go to school close to their hometowns and close to family support and not have to move across the country to attend college. We really want to share what we’re doing with colleges and universities in hopes that they will do the same in their local community.” O
Gifts in support of Operation Education may be made by calling the University of Idaho at (208) 885-7069 or toll-free (866) 671-7041, or online at www.uidaho.edu/givetoidaho.
ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS FOR OPERATION EDUCATION SCHOLARSHIP
1. Honorably separated U.S. military veteran from the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard, Reserves or National Guard.
2. Has a service-connected injury caused or aggravated by military service after September 11, 2001; as a result of that injury, has a physical disability that severely impacts function of one or more major life activities.
3. Meets the requirements for admission to the University of Idaho as a degree-seeking student.
4. Enrolls as a full-time undergraduate, graduate or law student at the university. The scholarship committee may make an exception for part-time enrollment should the disability and other circumstances, in the committee’s judgment, preclude full-time enrollment.
5. The spouse of a veteran who meets requirements 1 and 2 may be eligible; the spouse also must meet requirements 3 and 4. In partnership, a veteran and spouse may both be eligible to receive funding and other services provided by the program as each pursues an Idaho degree.
6. Priority will be given to Idaho residents and to those veterans whose injury and resulting disability are the result of action in a combat zone. ♦