{"id":2188,"date":"2023-09-26T13:55:07","date_gmt":"2023-09-26T13:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/m-span.org\/pave\/?p=2188"},"modified":"2023-09-29T14:07:46","modified_gmt":"2023-09-29T14:07:46","slug":"september-2023-featured-campus-university-of-oklahoma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/m-span.org\/pave\/2023\/09\/26\/september-2023-featured-campus-university-of-oklahoma\/","title":{"rendered":"September 2023 Featured Campus: University of Oklahoma"},"content":{"rendered":"
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University of Oklahoma is our Featured Campus for September!<\/strong> \u201cThe University of Oklahoma (OU) PAVE team has generated phenomenal momentum on campus with the opening of their new Veteran Zone space and several successful outreach events. The team has demonstrated consistent dedication to connecting and engaging with the students they serve and partnering with other veteran organizations like SVA,\u201d says Emma Czajka, PAVE Program Coordinator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The OU PAVE Team consists of Daniel Glass (Team Leader), Jennifer Trimmer (Director of Veteran Student Services), Peer Advisors Carla Laguna, Brian Garza, Scot Leverson, David Taitano, Logan Fuchs, and Jose Lopez de Loera, and Matt Hamilton (Campus Champion). While their military-connected and veteran students number in the thousands, they focus their efforts on serving the nearly 200 first semester military-connected students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\ufeffLaunching PAVE at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic proved challenging. Still, through hard work and dedication, PAVE at OU continues to grow both in scope and impact. \u201cI think this year is especially robust with engagement because one, the work that the Peer Advisors have put in to establish the program and get it out there and two, the SVA has really ramped up this year,\u201d says Daniel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite challenges, according to Jennifer Trimmer, \u201cIn April the stars just aligned\u201d for the OU PAVE team, and one of those stars was the opening of their new Veteran Zone on campus. The Veteran Zone has opened up more opportunities to engage with all members of the campus, especially student veterans. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of organic conversations happening in the Vet Zone,\u201d says Scot, \u201cWe end up helping a lot more people that way.\u201d According to Carla, more faculty are showing interest and getting involved in engaging with student veterans on campus. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAVE\u2019s positive impact at OU has included the PAVE team members themselves. \u201cI was that student who didn\u2019t want any help, who wanted to figure it out on my own. I didn\u2019t feel like I had any friends or any community and that\u2019s why I wanted to join the PAVE community,\u201d says Brian. Overall, the OU PAVE team is responding to and helping fulfill a need for community among student veterans on campus. \u201cPAVE is the base of something that\u2019s bigger for us as veterans because we are a community and we talk \u2026 PAVE represents that and us advocating for each other and networking with each other. We need to keep it going as veterans,\u201d says David.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keep up the great work supporting your student veterans and military-connected students, OU!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

University of Oklahoma is our Featured Campus for September! \u201cThe University of Oklahoma (OU) PAVE team has generated phenomenal momentum on campus with the opening of their new Veteran Zone … Learn More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":2189,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/m-span.org\/pave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2188"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/m-span.org\/pave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/m-span.org\/pave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/m-span.org\/pave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/m-span.org\/pave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2188"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/m-span.org\/pave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2190,"href":"https:\/\/m-span.org\/pave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2188\/revisions\/2190"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/m-span.org\/pave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/m-span.org\/pave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/m-span.org\/pave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/m-span.org\/pave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}