[Psvs-t] [EXT] Private School Consortium Monthly Meetings

[Ruiz, Trisha N]

Hi Kevin,

Hope you and your family are doing better. Prayers of healing sent your way.

Adriana Leal of UIW and I were discussing this very topic yesterday! Her and I are co-presenting at TACVPO next month on Opportunities and Obstacles faced by private schools. We are also planning a dinner for all of us private school representatives who will be in SA for the conference. The purpose of our presentation and time together is to create a private school community of support, especially as the VA continues to change or implement policies with little to no guidance. As we all know, this field can be immensely difficult so our goal is to create a space with continuous support! With new SCO's in mind, we would like to create a space where no question is too small or too big. To include monthly or quarterly Zoom meetings, depending on what the group at large would like to see. The University of St. Thomas would gladly host an in-person component if the desire is there, as well.

Please let Adriana and I know how we may help further this conversation. Also, if you are planning on attending TACVPO next month, please let me know if you would be interested in joining us for dinner so that we may begin securing an attendee list for reservation purposes. We look forward to helping in any capacity possible! Hope to see some of you all next month.

Kindly,
Dr. Ruiz

Dr. Trisha Nicole Ruiz
Veteran Success Center
University of St. Thomas-Houston
Call/Text: 281-658-7158





From: Psvs-t <psvs-t-bounces at baylor.edu> On Behalf Of Davis, Kevin
Sent: Friday, February 17, 2023 12:31 PM
To: PSVS-T <PSVS-T at baylor.edu>
Subject: [EXT][Psvs-t] Private School Consortium Monthly Meetings


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Hey Texas Private School Veterans Consortium!

I must apologize for how absent I have been for the last couple months since we last met! Unfortunately, I had some medical stuff with family that put me out for about a month and then just trying to dig out of that.

I say that, just to say, I truly wanted to keep momentum moving forward with this group from when we met virtually last, and would love to reignite that moment!

Anyways, we had discussed meeting virtually more regularly. Therefore, I am going to send out a monthly calendar invite for us to meet. We can then center these monthly conversations around different topics. I would love yalls thoughts on topics that we could address. Based on our last conversation and some ideas I had, the following topics may provide a good jumping off point to start with:


  *   Reserve/National Guard Policies - with Texas State Laws that set more specific rules around mandatory leaves of absence, this leaves a gap for Private Institutions that aren't held to these.
  *   Advocating for the Expansion of Yellow Ribbon Benefits at your School
  *   Recruitment/Education Efforts around Military-Connected Students and increasing awareness of Yellow Ribbon/Affordability
  *   Faith Formation Programming for Veterans - For those private institutions with faith-centered missions.
  *   Best Practices for Building Community at Private Schools- As private institutions, we have smaller base numbers of our population, meaning the 5-10% student engagement that student activities may typically see, equates to maybe 5-10 students (or less) vs. State schools who will get 50-100 students attending - thus a more robust community for those engaging to connect with.
  *   Assessment Data - The collective voice of this group may have a unique opportunity to hone in on a collective assessment tool that we could develop to assess our programs and then advocate to our University and legislators for advancing policies that are data informed best practices. Would love to hear more about what you all are doing for assessment and perhaps what your thoughts are on this?
  *   VA Education Benefit Processing Practices - Certifying, TVC, VA Policies, etc... (there is probably a hundred topics to cover in this realm, but I am not an SCO so I will leave this conversation and topic setting to the experts.
  *   What else do you all have that you would like addressed?

In light of my absence and momentum falling off, I think that also points to our need of committee leadership so we have some redundancy in leadership who can keep momentum going in this group. This may be a topic we address in conjunction with whatever topic we cover first.

Thanks yall for bearing with me! Stand by for calendar invites with Zoom links for upcoming meetings.

Best,
Kevin

Kevin Davis
VETS Program Manager
Student Success Initiatives
Paul L Foster Success Center
Basement - 011
254.710.7264 - Office
719.332.3446 - Cell
VETS Facebook<https://www.facebook.com/BaylorVETS/>

[BU_e-signature[10]]


Military Veteran Students - If you ever want to go grab coffee or lunch on campus sometime, please let me know (my treat)!! I would love to hear more about you, your Baylor journey and what brought you here!

"I Slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold - service was joy!" - Rabindranath Tagore

May we all have joy filled lives!!

"D=S-P (Despair = Suffering without Purpose)" - Viktor Frankl

Let us not despair and choose to find purpose outside of ourselves.


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