Pitt-Greensburg's SITREP program helps veterans transition to college

You wouldn’t expect a veteran to be intimidated by the prospect of attending college, given the rigors of military life and the stress of active-duty service.

But it happened to Jacob Snyder of Murrysville, and he sees it frequently when talking with incoming student-veterans at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg campus, where he is a senior and a student-veteran mentor.

“The last time I stepped into a classroom was 20 years ago,” said Snyder, 42, a 20-year Army veteran who spent three tours in Afghanistan and was deployed to Kosovo in 1999 and Iraq in 2003. “I didn’t know how it was going to go, or what was going to go on.”

Luckily, Snyder was able to connect with members of the school’s recently formed SITREP program, which serves as a liaison between student-veterans and staff, to help them make the transition to college and to connect them with a wide array of regional resources.

SITREP — Service, Initiative, Transition, Resource, Education and Partnership — was started by Pitt-Greensburg alum Alex “Red” Bittner, a soldier in the Army Reserve who is now the school’s assistant director of admissions, and Air Force veteran Lisa Reffner, Pitt-Greensburg’s data and registrar specialist.

After serving two years in the Army, Bittner enrolled at Pitt-Greensburg in 2012 and found a lack of resources for student-­veterans.

“We had a meeting with Edwin Hernandez, (former head of) veteran services at Pitt’s main campus, and that meeting went so well, and we had so many good ideas that came out of it, that we started proactively working toward creating this program.”

Reffner said the SITREP team went about developing a network.

“We started by developing a system of contacts across campus, which became our veteran action team,” Reffner said. “We have representation from (the offices of) academic affairs, student services, residence life, the registrar’s office, advising — all of the key elements on campus. So we’re able to meet and discuss concerns, the needs of our veterans on campus and how we can address them.”

For older student-­veterans like Snyder, one of those issues was leaving his student life on campus.

“I’d say the hardest thing to work around is your personal life or your family,” he said. “When I go home, I have five kids, so if I don’t do the work while I’m at school, and do it early, I wasn’t going to get it done.”

Snyder talks with incoming student-veterans about trying to achieve that balance, after finding it himself when he connected with Reffner during his first year of school.

“Not really being a traditional student, she was sort of my main point of contact,” Snyder said. “I would go in and visit once a week, just to see how things were and talk to her about different things going on, and she’d run ideas past me, which is how I got involved in the program.”

Bitter said his experience transitioning from veteran to student involved what a friend called “mode-switching.”

“As a veteran student, some of the things that stick in your mind are the way you approach situations, the way that you handle time management; most veterans are coming in, and they’re older, more mature and have different experiences than, say, the rest of the incoming freshman class,” he said.

Bitter said student-veterans are regularly going back and forth — particularly if they’re still serving in a Reserve or National Guard capacity — and experiencing that “mode-switching.”

“Sometimes all they need is for someone to be the middleman,” he said. “Someone who works for the university who’s not only acting on their behalf but is also able to talk with faculty and the university to say, ‘This is what’s really going on.’”

Snyder is pursuing a history degree with a minor in political science, with plans to head to graduate school next year. He said the SITREP program was immensely beneficial.

“If you’re looking for a quality education and an environment where you can excel as a veteran, Pitt-Greensburg is an excellent place.”