Date of Award
5-2022
Culminating Project Type
Dissertation
Styleguide
apa
Degree Name
Higher Education Administration: Ed.D.
Department
Educational Administration and Higher Education
College
School of Education
First Advisor
Steven McCullar
Second Advisor
Jennifer Benson-Jones
Third Advisor
Rachel Friedensen
Fourth Advisor
Corbin Smyth
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Keywords and Subject Headings
Student veteran
Abstract
The impact of deployment on the returning student veteran to a four-year institution is unknown to the majority of the general population. With less than 5% of the population having served in the military and even fewer of those deployed overseas for greater than one year, it can be expected that there is little research on this topic at this institution of higher education. The purpose of the narrative inquiry qualitative research study is to fill the knowledge void and add to the current literature. The research participants are current or former students (graduates) within the last ten years, whose academic programs were interrupted at least once by a military deployment. These student veterans includes current and alumni undergraduate and graduate students. The theoretical framework used for this study was Transition 2.0: A Theoretical Critique of Tinto’s Model for Exploring Student-Veteran Persistence. This research utilized the narrative inquiry method to gain the lived experiences of the research participants. The sample consisted of 9 participants from an upper Midwest regional state university. Interviews were recorded and later analyzed using NVivo Software; interview notes supplemented transcripts for non-verbal messaging. Analysis of the participant narratives identified three themes that support the Theoretical Framework presented above: Goals/Commitments, Institutional Commitment, and Development and Integration. Student-veterans shared their experiences and thoughts about how they felt as students returning to the same institution regarding academics, fellow students, and the administrative processes. In summary, all participants reported a positive experience with suggestions for improvements.
Recommended Citation
Nierengarten, Gary, "Influence of Deployment on the Returning Student Veteran to a Four Year Institution" (2022). Culminating Projects in Higher Education Administration. 58.
https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/hied_etds/58
