February 28, 2017 —With about 20 percent of its students connected to the military, Texas A & M University, San Antonio, recently took an extraordinary step: It became the first college in the United States to require all faculty and staff to take “military competency” training. As part of its mission to be “military embracing,” it wanted everyone to better understand the experiences of veterans and military families, and help them transition to academic life.
A growing number of schools are offering similar training on a voluntary basis, even though they have a much smaller percentage of students with a military background. Student vets can figure out who’s had the training by looking for the symbols professors put up on their office doors or classroom walls.
