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Continuing education after years of technician experience can pose multiple challenges to the adult student population, such as incumbent workforce technicians and veterans. Veterans, through their active service, frequently receive training in highly skilled technical areas but may lack a theoretical background in underlying engineering principles. While STEM education is important for the maintenance of national competitiveness, it is especially critical that the nation’s veterans, who possess technical STEM training gained in the military, are enabled to pursue higher education in order to increase the quantity and quality of talent available in the STEM workforce. A program that will be presented in this paper emphasizes the importance of recruiting students to engineering and engineering technology disciplines, mentoring and supporting students through degree completion, and partnering with employers to facilitate student academic success and career placement in the STEM workforce. Enabling multiple mechanisms which support and provide guidance are especially important at universities with large veteran populations such as Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia. Advancing the field’s understanding of interventions that affect these outcomes for adult students and student veterans is important for the improvement of future support programs as well as to guide implementation across different institutions. The program presented in this paper is funded by the National Science Foundation.
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Modeling Education Deserts for Veterans and Military Families in the Southern United States
Despite billions of dollars invested in educational benefits for veterans and active-duty military families under the U.S. Post-9/11 GI Bill, many prospective students are not forging pathways through public institutions of higher education, and funding is disproportionately spent on for-profit colleges. To reveal patterns of lack of access and opportunity, we propose a novel, robust analysis tailored to the situation of veterans and military families in the southern United States. This methodology delineates education deserts using fuzzy algorithms and multivariate spatial analysis to move beyond simple “hotspot” identification of distance from university locations. Results and comparisons of four models confirm different patterns for veterans versus nonveterans and show dynamic regional changes from 2005 through 2017 that reflect shifting demographics, economics, and educational offerings. These insights could inform a roadmap for outreach that accounts for shifting education deserts and potentially workforce opportunities through geographic analysis. This approach represents a potential first step for academic actors, especially in the public sector, who play a role in advancing science, technology, engineering, and math; geography; and geographic information systems to enable veteran and military families to better achieve equitable rates of educational attainment.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1810587
- PAR ID:
- 10299882
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Annals of the American Association of Geographers
- ISSN:
- 2469-4452
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 24
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2021.1947769
