Plans to open a Veterans Resource Center on the Fresno City College campus and improve veteran student life continue to develop.
The Veterans Resource Center had been set to open in “the old business office sometime during the fall 2013 semester,” according to a story in the Rampage, published in the spring semester of 2013.
Even though the resource center is still going to open, the earliest that it could happen is at the end of the fall 2013 semester, and the location in which it is going to be placed has yet to be decided.
“Right now we’re going through a process,” said Tony Cantu, president of FCC. “The Facilities Committee is reviewing proposals. That is our process. So I’m waiting for the committee to go through its process and make a recommendation to me.”
Once the recommendations are made, the plans for the resource center are able to move forward, but nothing is set until then.
The old business office on the west side of the FCC campus is but one of the options that the Facilities Committee is looking at for the center.
“It’s an action plan that they [the veteran’s office] submitted and it’s considered with other action plans,” said Cantu.
Securing a new location for the Veterans Resource Center is top priority. Cantu recognizes the problems posed by the size of the current center.
“It’s really rather small,” Cantu said.
The Veterans Resource Center is envisioned to be a place where student veterans can go to receive help for their academic endeavors, find out about local resources, and most of all, create a community support group where the veterans can interact and help each other navigate through college life.
Even though the veteran’s office is at a standstill in creating community because of their small space, the office is making progressing in providing more resources available to the veteran students.
Just recently, the campus received a visit from team AMVETS, a branch of the Department of California Service Foundation that is dedicated to serving the needs of veterans.
It is likely that it will see many more visits like it from them in the future.
“There will be somebody from [AMVETS] on campus on a regular basis, maybe once a week, that becomes the main resource. So they almost consolidate all of the resources that are available to veterans say in Fresno,” said Cantu.
Along with possibly involving AMVETS more on campus, some of the college’s faculty have taken trips to other resource centers down south to study different models of what’s out there and figure out what would work best for FCC.
The veteran’s office staff is excited about plans to improve veteran student life on campus.
Mary Alfieris, veterans certification specialist at FCC, said that veterans are a different kind of student.
Alfieris said veterans have different challenges than their average FCC classmates.
So the resource center will be beneficial to them because they can “share their experiences, and strengthen one another.”
