Indiana University of Pennsylvania has been selected by Victory Media, publisher of G.I. Jobs, STEM Jobs, and Military Spouse magazines, for its 2016 list of Military Friendly Schools.
This is the fifth year IUP has been selected for the list, which honors institutions the magazine's editors describe as delivering “the best experience for military students.”
The list, in its seventh year, was compiled through research that included polling schools throughout the nation. Criteria for the Military Friendly Schools list include efforts to recruit and retain students who are veterans or in the military, success in recruiting those students, and academic accreditations.
“IUP would like to thank Victory Media for voting us to their Military Friendly Schools list for the fifth year in a row,” Cory Shay, director of IUP's Military Resource Center, said. “It is an honor to be recognized for the work that IUP has done to help our veteran and military-affiliated students. IUP will continue to work hard to improve our services for our veterans.”
IUP opened the resource center in January 2014 to help veterans and members of the military transition to college life. The university also has a Veterans Affairs office, dedicated to serving student veterans and dependents of veterans.
In 2012, IUP was selected by Military Times magazine as one of the nation's “Best for Vets” institutions. IUP was one of only 68 four-year colleges in the nation chosen for the listing. Eberly College of Business and Information Technology has been ranked on the “Best for Vets: Business Schools by Military Times in 2013 and 2015. U.S. News and World Report ranked IUP among the top 50 national universities “Best Colleges for Veterans list in 2013. Military Advanced Education named IUP a top military-friendly school in 2013 and as a “MAE 2015 Top School.”
IUP is also a participant in the Yellow Ribbon program, a provision of the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2008 that allows U.S. colleges and universities to enter into an agreement with the Department of Veterans Affairs to fund tuition expenses that exceed the highest public in-state undergraduate tuition rate.
Many IUP departments work collaboratively with the Military Resource Center to provide programs and initiatives to help veterans and their families. For example, the IUP Career and Professional Development Center, working with the Military Resource Center and the Veterans Leadership Program of Western Pennsylvania, will host a resume-review training to help veterans “translate” military experience into resumes on November 19, 2015. The event features Leah Kurz, Marine veteran and a workforce development coordinator with the Veterans Leadership Program, and Khrysta Brown, a member of the Army Reserve who served in Afghanistan. Brown, who will graduate from IUP in December, is a human resource specialist at Peoples Natural Gas who was served by the Veterans Leadership Program of Western Pennsylvania.