{"id":96564,"date":"2025-12-26T20:00:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-26T20:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/96564\/"},"modified":"2025-12-26T20:00:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-26T20:00:08","slug":"st-petersburg-college-recognized-as-a-purple-star-campus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/96564\/","title":{"rendered":"St. Petersburg College recognized as a Purple Star Campus"},"content":{"rendered":"

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014\u00a0St. Petersburg College<\/a> recently earned a prestigious honor.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

What You Need To Know<\/p>\n

St. Petersburg College<\/a> has been named a Purple Star Campus\u00a0\u00a0
\n
This designation was created in 2023\u00a0\u00a0
\n
There are currently 20 schools in the state with the designation\u00a0<\/p>\n

The school was named a Purple Star Campus for its support of veteran students<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The designation was created by the Florida Legislature<\/a> in 2023 to recognize colleges that show a commitment to supporting military families.<\/p>\n

For Skander Philipi, a St. Petersburg College student, transitioning from military to civilian life is not easy.<\/p>\n

“Leaving the Marine Corps, I had a retirement, and I had benefits to help me in life, but I wanted to pursue something more than just being a Marine,” he said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Skander served as a Marine for 16 years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He deployed to Afghanistan, in addition to spending time as a drill instructor, combat instructor, and martial arts instructor.<\/p>\n

Skander is not surprised that the college received the Purple Star designation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The teachers are more in-depth with you, hands-on, because it’s a small classroom,” he said. “So I think it’s a very beneficial environment for veterans.”<\/p>\n

When Allison Shenofsky, coordinator of Veteran Services, was looking into what it would take for St. Petersburg College to become a Purple Star campus, she realized they already met many of the requirements.<\/p>\n

This included appointing a dedicated military liaison and offering a student-led transition program, and more.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As an Army veteran, Shenofsky said she wants her fellow veterans to feel comfortable in their transition back to civilian life.<\/p>\n

“When I took my uniform off, I thought it would be A-OK, nothing’s weird,” she said. “And everything was weird.”\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Florida schools that are designated collegiate Purple Star campuses keep that honor for three academic years.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are currently 20 schools with the honor in the state, including three others in the Bay Area: Pasco-Hernando State College, Polk State College, and State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014\u00a0St. Petersburg College recently earned a prestigious honor.\u00a0\u00a0 What You Need To Know St. Petersburg…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96565,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[4996,274,113,4628,115,596,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,278,835],"class_list":["post-96564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-app-education","tag-app-top-stories","tag-education","tag-matt-lackritz","tag-news","tag-pinellas-county","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-tampa","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}