Grand Valley Magazine Summer 2014 - (Page 28)

DEPLOYMENT ENROLLMENT GROWING NUMBER OF VETERANS BECOME LAKERS by Leah Twilley 28 Summer '14 W hile stationed in Afghanistan for seven months from 2011-2012, Keith Eichholz wrote reports about information gathered in the ﬁeld for his Marine Corps ofﬁcers and others in the intelligence community. Five years later, that writing experience inﬂuenced him to pursue a degree in journalism at Grand Valley. "I took that job very seriously," said Eichholz, a Marine Corps veteran. "I had to sift through a lot of information and decide what was important and present it in a concise, easy-to-read document." Eichholz, a native of Battle Creek, is one of 442 student veterans and service members who attended Grand Valley during the winter 2014 semester. That number is up from 199 student veterans in 2009. Steven Lipnicki, assistant dean of students, said the number of student veterans using Post 9/11 GI Bill beneﬁts increases almost every year, both locally and nationally. As of September 2013, there were nearly 22 million veterans in the U.S., including 680,000 in Michigan. "We think this number will increase as more troops are pulled out of Afghanistan and a force reduction takes place," Lipnicki said. "This will mean more people in units who are based in Michigan will be

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Grand Valley Magazine Summer 2014

Table of Contents
Campus News
Fall Arts Celebration
Athletics
Donor Impact
Sustainability
Research
Q&A Karen Gipson
A seat at the table
Students dig program
Deployment to enrollment
Seeing double
Off the path
Arts
Alumni News

Grand Valley Magazine Summer 2014