By Donald Gilpin

Helping veterans to sharpen their study skills and prepare to transition to an academic environment, Princeton University is currently partnering with the Warrior-Scholar Project (WSP) for a Humanities and STEM Academic Boot Camp on campus July 16-28.

Thirteen veterans are participating in this year’s WSP at Princeton, making a total of more than 80 participants since Princeton first hosted the program in the summer of 2017. WSP’s first boot camp took place at Yale University in 2012, and since then the program has expanded to 23 of the country’s top schools, giving more than 2,100 veterans a boost on their way to higher education.

Ninety percent of WSP alumni have completed or are on track to earn a college degree, compared to 72 percent of all student veterans and 65 percent of all traditional undergraduate students. Out of WSP’s 2022 participants, 60 percent identified as first-gen college students, 70 percent were persons of color, and 28 percent were women.

This year the two-week boot camp at Princeton will be followed by WSP’s Second Annual Alumni Conference from July 28-30. Nearly 200 veterans are expected to attend the conference, which will provide an opportunity for alumni of the program to participate in sessions and workshops led by leaders in the military and higher education. Sponsored by Walmart, A Friends’ Foundation, Johnson & Johnson, and McKinsey & Company, the event is free for WSP alumni. 

“Princeton University is honored to partner with the Warrior-Scholar project to support student veteran success at selective colleges and universities, including on our campus,“ said Princeton University Vice Provost for Institutional Equity and Diversity Michele Minter. “We are also pleased to host Warrior-Scholar Project alumni on our campus as they build community and support each other’s academic and professional journeys through the Warrior-Scholar Alumni Conference.”

Keith Shaw, Princeton’s director of transfer and non-traditional student programs for the Emma Bloomberg Center for Access and Opportunity, has been a leader of the WSP project at Princeton since its start in 2017.

He noted that this is just one of many programs the University has been involved with in the past 10 years in its efforts to promote access and diversity at Princeton and in higher education in general. 

He noted that in 2016 there was only one veteran enrolled on campus, but with a push for more non-traditional students and a revival of the transfer program that number will have grown to more than 60 by this fall, 18 of whom will have participated at some point in the WSP program. A total of 30 WSP alumni have enrolled at Princeton since the beginning of the program.

This summer’s WSP cohort, housed on campus at Princeton, last week completed a rigorous schedule of humanities classes with a focus on key skills like analytical reading and advanced writing. This week the focus is on STEM.

“The students are really invested and are working really hard,” said Shaw. “They are fun to work with, but very different from most Princeton University undergraduates. These students are more emotionally mature, more disciplined, and more willing to take honest feedback.”

He went on to comment on how eager the warrior-scholars were to improve and how curious they were about academics but also about what it’s like to be a student at a four-year college like Princeton. 

Shaw noted that this two-week boot camp is providing the veteran students with a valuable opportunity, not just to be better equipped with academic skills, but also to make smart decisions about taking the next steps in their education.

Hanh Dinh, who will be starting her senior year this fall as a cognitive science major at the University of California, San Diego, participated in WSP at Yale University last summer and this summer is working as a STEM Fellow at the Princeton WSP, mentoring other student veterans enrolled in the program. 

The 23-year-old former ammunition technician stationed in Okinawa for three of her four years in the service described her role as a mentor in the Princeton WSP. “During the afternoons we hold sessions to help the veteran students solidify the information they’ve learned during the mornings,” she said. “At nighttime we provide one-on-one physics tutoring for them, and throughout the whole program we’re there for them if there are any questions about academics or going back to college. Since we’re all currently University students, we can provide that guidance.”