LACC Celebrates Veteran’s Day
On Tuesday, November 10, 2015, Los Angeles City College held their first annual ‘Veterans Have Talent’ in honor of Veteran’s Day. Before the talent portion of the event kicked off, Blas Villalobo, Veterans Advisory Commissioner at Los Angeles County Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, and LACC’s Congressman Adam Schiff said a few words to the more than 200 veterans in attendance.
LACC has the largest number of veterans within the Los Angeles Community College District, over 500, and was rated the top school in the District for programs and service to Veterans. LACC also has the largest resource center and full-time staff dedicated to serving all of our veteran’s needs.
Our veterans include students like Keon Miller, a Marine from Mississippi who served for six years. Last year he was honorably discharged from the service. Since he was stationed nearby at 29 Palms at the time, he decided to come to Los Angeles, not knowing anyone. For the first week he was homeless, sleeping at Venice Beach, but found a place to live in Koreatown off of a Craigslist ad. His roommate was attending LACC and encouraged Keon to attend. Today Keon is a business major and plans to transfer to USC in the fall to study finance. He also interns at the VA and is instrumental on campus ensuring all LACC veterans have the correct information in order to receive all the benefits entitled to them, including help with housing, furniture, counseling and educational assistance.
If you would like to support Veteran’s Scholarship and programmatic needs at LACC, click here.
About LACC Veteran’s Program:
The Veterans Resource Center was formed to provide a supportive, collaborative environment designed to reduce the obstacles that veterans and their families face as they prepare to access post-deployment training, education and careers. The goal is to improve college graduation and transfer rates for veterans by providing comprehensive resources, including multifaceted educational and community intervention services.
Through existing financial assistance, the efforts of the VRC, and substantial support from LACC Foundation, veterans at LACC have achieved extraordinary results. Veterans are more than twice as likely as non-veteran students to take a full course load. They persist in their educational pursuits at much higher rates than non-veteran students with 72% persisting from semester to semester (vs. 59% for non-veterans) and 58% persisting from year to year (vs. 46% for non-veterans).
This higher level of success exists despite the fact that many veterans have physical and psychological disabilities that create an additional barrier to persistence. The efforts of the VRC and LACC Foundation in enhancing the success of LACC’s students who are veterans is most dramatic when viewed within the context of an estimated 50% level of homelessness for this segment of the student population.
The LACC Foundation seeks support for these veterans from corporations, private foundations, and individuals. The service to our country provided by these students deserves nothing less than our investment in their future success.
