By NICOLE ANDERSON/Contributor
Editor’s Note: Nicole Anderson is a veteran.
Chris Cox, coordinator of veteran’s affairs at the Military and Veterans Success Center at The University of Texas at Tyler, helps veterans with both their educational and mental journeys.
As a veteran, he has assisted many vets who face challenges to grow, recover, adjust and finding their purpose after their service. He helps with the resources veterans need to support their families, get vocational training and finding a way out of whatever issues they may face.
He recently shared more about his work and passion of helping veterans.
What inspired you to become a coordinator?
I saw a tremendous need when I worked in the enrollment service center. I worked there for about six months and saw veterans coming in and needing help, and there wasn’t a one point of service or reference for them. The opportunity came up to open an office, and I jumped in and volunteered and wanted to do that quickly.
And about a year later, I got to serve in that office, and I never looked back. We’re constantly trying to change to make things improve for the military affiliated community.
How long you have been in your field?
This has been going on for 14 years now. I have been in this space helping with admissions, registrations, financial aid and military benefits.
What is a day in the life of a coordinator for veterans or their families like?
It really varies by day honestly. I mean one day I could be playing counselor to help someone with PTSD. I could help someone with several different ailments or try to find resources and help. I also work with student counseling services on campus to try and coordinate services and work with entities off campus as well.
What are the requirements? Do those requirements include a security clearance since veterans’ benefits are federally connected?
So, the requirement when we first opened was a Bachelor of Science of some kind, and experience in admissions, registration and financial aid. So, I was a veteran myself, which is typically included in a lot of these types of jobs. And then I had the experience in enrollment services. I had just started working on my master’s when I got in here and finished the semester after the doors opened. At the time it was called the “Veterans Resource Center.”
So, with a bachelor’s in communication and a master’s degree in human resources development helped me quite a bit in this role working with different personalities and figuring out how people learn and how they work together. There are no security clearances specific to this job, it’s a management type position. There are no Veterans Affairs clearances you must have; I have several certifications that help in dealing with the issues I deal with daily.
On an average how many veterans/affiliates are enrolled with UT Tyler?
We call them “military-affiliated students,” and that is everyone from active duty, retired veterans, veterans that have served and gotten out, we have military affiliated which would be spouses or dependents of veterans using benefits. We have roughly about 800 or so, and then we have probably another 100 that are not using the benefits. We are creeping back up in numbers, but it varies by day.
Some days we are absolutely slammed and some days we are not. There is really no rhyme or reason at all. Usually there is an uptick to process benefits before the semester starts because so many people are coming that don’t know what to do so we have a process in place to kind of walk through that.
You founded the Student Veterans of America chapter and were nominated Chapter Adviser of the Year. Tell me how it is going for students in Smith County.
I was the first one to bring a Veterans of America chapter to the campus, that is for all military-affiliated students. The idea is to build comradery, teamwork, leadership opportunities. I was the founding president of the SVA and founding father of the SVA, and over the years we’ve run it successfully for about 10 years, but we’ve noticed the past couple of years there has been a huge drop in participation so we’re on hold right now because we don’t have anyone who wants to step up and run it. The SVA is to help advocate for student veterans and military-affiliated students.
The organization was instrumental in the processing post-9/11 GI Bill complete. The organization has done quite a few legislative actions trying to make sure all the laws and regulations are done equitably and evenly across the board. There is a student veterans conference every year that I would take students to and let them seem how to network and ask questions about other places to see what’s working there.
We have been able to see if other schools are having issues or is it just a policy shift somewhere, if it is legislatively or something that needs to be delt with on campus. So, it’s been great to network and have those opportunities to learn and share information.
Talk about the research for PTSD treatment.
Well, PTSD is one of those kinds of things, it’s been an unusual, if you want to call it illness I don’t know if you want to call it that or not, but it is a mental issue that varies by person. PTSD can be present 30 or 40 different ways in the research, in the books you read and the people you talk to you can see that play out.
Since there are so many different varieties of how that affects a person whether it’s lack of sleep, if it’s medication that they need, forgetfulness. If it is elevated to something like depression or anxiety, there are multiple steps and multiple levels that can come out of having a PTSD event.
Have you seen students or have encountered students who have signed up for school to keep themselves busy so that they don’t fall into that depression?
Yeah, we’ve had students signed up that have gotten out and they have no clue what to do. They literally sign up for school to keep themselves numb and that’s the one thing we’ve had to work with, while they come to school, they are still struggling with alcoholism or drug abuse. You can never feed into PTSD to get rid of it.
You are also with the American Association of Christian Counselors?
Yeah, I am a sexual addiction counselor through the organization. I have a few certs, the more education you get, the better; I have never stopped trying to learn. If you stop learning, then what good are you to anybody? You get stuck in your ways and you don’t think about the new methods and pedagogies and all that stuff.
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