Centralight

Steve Rellinger and Jeremy Simerson are ready to serve veterans who are now pursuing their college degrees. For more visit cel.cmich.edu/veterans. Down a corridor off Warriner Hall's first floor hallway, Steve Rellinger sits at his desk and flips through some government paperwork as his student employee Jeremy Simerson answers the phone. 'From soldier to scholar' CMU Veterans' Resource Center serves those who served BY DAN DIGMANN Warriner Hall 114B is a modest-sized office considering the type of work Rellinger, '85 M.A. '96, and his crew are handling in the CMU Veterans' Resource Center. Plus, the volume of users is destined to dramatically increase as more veterans return home from serving in Iraq, Afghanistan and other assignments worldwide. The recently established Veterans' Resource Center is committed to providing all veterans assistance in understanding their educational benefits, help with building academic and social networks, and support in transitioning from active duty to attending classes in any of CMU's locations or online. "To help veterans with the transition we often put it as, 'Just consider this your new mission,'" says Rellinger, the center's director who actively served in the Navy from 1976 to 1980. "Now their mission is transitioning from soldier to scholar." It is estimated that nearly two million service members and their families became eligible for newly expanded benefits under the Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act, better known as the Post-9/11 GI Bill that took effect Aug. 1, 2009. Representing the largest expansion of veterans' education benefits since passage of the original GI Bill in 1944, the Post-9/11 GI Bill increased the higher education benefits available to individuals who served on active duty in the U.S. armed forces after Sept. 10, 2001. A few quick questions from the caller and Simerson, '11, knows exactly where to find the information on the computer. He's becoming all-to-familiar with the sometimes-complicated new GI Bill and other Veterans Affairs benefits. Simerson, who is a first-year graduate student in the master of science in administration 20 centralight spring '12 USMC veteran Marq Hicks is pursuing a degree in interpersonal communications. PHOTO BY PEGGY BRISBANE

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