In a boot camp that tests brains over brawn, military veterans seeking a college education convened at Caltech this summer to simulate the intensity of finals week among faculty, researchers and mentors, participating in a program that helps them assess whether they are ready to transition to academia.<\/p>\n
The Warrior-Scholar Project is a STEM intensive founded in 2012 at Yale and has served nearly 3,000 veterans, challenging them with up to 75 hours of academic work. The program has been offered at Caltech for seven years. <\/p>\n
Participants choose between three types of programming: STEM, business fundamentals and a humanities course. The most popular is the STEM track \u2014 science, technology, engineering and mathematics.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea is that by going through WSP at Caltech, they understand, \u2018I have what it takes to be at one of these phenomenal institutions,\u2019 \u201d said Ryan Pavel, chief executive of the nonprofit and a former Marine sergeant. \u201cIf I want to pursue something at Caltech or MIT, then there\u2019s a pathway.\u201d<\/p>\n
About 80% of the project\u2019s participants complete their degree, Pavel said. More than half are first-generation college students.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a population which is very worth actively recruiting because there\u2019s specialized talent here,\u201d Pavel said. <\/p>\n
Universities nationwide host the boot camps, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Notre Dame and USC. The program is free for participants, funded by a host of local and national foundations, corporations and individual donors. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s something about the demystification of just being on campus helping them build the skills to actually excel in a STEM curriculum,\u201d Pavel said. \u201cWe are committed to making sure veterans understand what they are capable of, and that could very well include education at an elite institution.\u201d <\/p>\n
A long day of boot camp<\/p>\n
The Caltech camp begins at 8:30 a.m. with a class on physics and motion, continues with an activity such as a behind-the-scenes lab tour or science exhibit, and concludes with rigorous problem sets that students rarely finish by the end of a day that typically stretches to 10 or 11 p.m. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe want them to push themselves to their limits here so that they can see where they need to improve before college,\u201d said Joshua Saint Juste, a program fellow, teaching assistant and former participant. <\/p>\n
The boot camp fosters an environment where students feel comfortable failing, said Saint Juste, 20, who will attend Kennesaw State University in the fall.<\/p>\n
The program \u201cshows you your strengths and your weaknesses, and what you want to do to fix your weaknesses, to get strong, to get prepared for college,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Students have the opportunity to work with researchers, PhD candidates and professors conducting research at the campus through a group research project in which they present their findings to peers and professors.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was working with an astrophysicist, and we were measuring the distance between stars within different galaxies … I got a little taste of what astrophysics could be,\u201d said Diego Maldonado, 23, a former participant and a current fellow who will attend Amherst Univerisity in the fall. <\/p>\n
Most participants already have been accepted to college, but many have not been in school for a while. Many are delaying college to enter into active duty first, even if they already received acceptance letters. <\/p>\n
Building a bridge to academia<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody is on a different journey. What we want to do here is equip them, so that they\u2019re ready when they do join,\u201d Saint Juste said.<\/p>\n
Warrior-Scholar Project fellows teach a college readiness curriculum to help inspire confidence. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been comforting that not everybody has it fully figured out yet,\u201d participant Ignacio Mora said. \u201cWe are very supportive of one another.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a certain type of tight-knit community that veterans have, but when you can maintain these connections across the country, it makes us feel like we belong in these elite academic communities,\u201d Maldonado added.<\/p>\n
Professors are eager to work with student veterans and believe the life experience veterans bring to the classroom is crucial to the intellectual diversity of institutions like Caltech. <\/p>\n
\u201cI assume they\u2019ve encountered much bigger challenges than being in a classroom and so they seem to come to it with a really healthy attitude and a willingness to engage with the material. That made it really fun to work with them,\u201d Caltech LIGO laboratory staff scientist Jonah Kanner said. The LIGO laboratory is a major research facility that partners with MIT to study gravitational-wave<\/a> astrophysics. <\/p>\n \u201cBeing in the military is very intense, but a lot of the skills we develop in the military come out in academics … I would also say that after service, we are definitely a lot more supportive of each other,\u201d Mora said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a boot camp that tests brains over brawn, military veterans seeking a college education convened at Caltech…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417962,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[167185,167188,27084,1815,167187,48,52,51,47,50,49,14756,75077,4576,22178,167186,645,15255,4574,1970,7780],"class_list":["post-417961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-academic-boot-camp","tag-brawn","tag-caltech","tag-college","tag-joshua-saint-juste","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-participant","tag-professor","tag-program","tag-researcher","tag-ryan-pavel","tag-science","tag-stem","tag-student","tag-technology","tag-veteran"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}