Back From the War
July 9, 2013
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From Maxwell Perspective...
Back From the War
Syracuse’s new Institute for Veterans and Military Families considers the impact of service on soldiers and on the people around them.
As unemployment rates across the country begin to improve, one group of job seekers remains underrepresented: recent veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.
"Our research suggests these veterans have been disproportionately affected by the recession," says Janet Wilmoth, a Maxwell School sociologist and demographer who has been studying veterans' issues since 2005.
Helping veterans become employed and encouraging employers to hire those who've served is a major focus area of the Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF), established last year at Syracuse University. The one-of-a-kind national institute, a joint venture of SU and JPMorganChase, develops programming, research, policy analysis, and technical assistance to address challenges facing the veterans' community.
"Veterans face formidable social and economic challenges throughout their post-service life course," says the institute's director, Mike Haynie, a management professor at SU and a former Air Force officer. "The resources and capabilities of higher education are well positioned to inform and impact many of these challenges. However, these resources and capabilities have never before been coordinated and leveraged on a national scale."
The creation of the IVMF comes at a critical juncture for veterans in America, in the wake of 10-plus years of sustained military conflict. Although there are fewer military personnel than during past conflicts, it's also the case that more members of an all-volunteer force choose to stay beyond their initial hitch — some for an entire career.
"In the past, most people who served were young, single men," says Maxwell sociologist and demographer Andrew London, who, along with Wilmoth, has conducted extensive research on veterans over the life course. "Now there are more military families. There are more dependents of military personnel today than there are military personnel."
The IVMF charges itself with understanding the challenges of military families and supporting them as they meet those challenges. The institute takes a dual approach: solid social science research combined with boots-on-the-ground practical intervention. In the latter category are efforts to assist those who have recently served — such as training programs to help veterans start small businesses, and industry partnerships to encourage employers to hire veterans.
The research side of the institute takes a broader view, examining issues related to long-term effects of service, including World War II, Korean, and Vietnam-era war veterans. The research hopes to foresee how service today might affect new veterans 10 or 50 years down the road.
“There are more military families. There are more dependents of military personnel today than there are military personnel.”
— Andrew London
Wilmoth and London, both senior fellows of the IVMF, are the SU faculty members with perhaps the greatest research expertise in this area. Their work began with a grant from the National Institute on Aging, with which they compared veterans with non-veterans to see how military service affects health trajectories among older men. Building on that work, they are finalizing an edited volume, Life Course Perspectives on Military Service, which includes contributions by other Maxwell faculty members and will be published later this year.
Wilmoth and London's continuing research on military service and life course has led to policy implications. For instance, they recently established that a comparatively high proportion of disabled veteran households live below the poverty threshold and experience real material hardships. "This is not something that is widely recognized," says London. "People assume that Veterans Administration programs are adequate to support veterans who are unable to work due to disability." The research suggests this is not so; more assistance might be required.
Another Maxwell unit with a stake in the IVMF is the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism (INSCT), which is co-sponsored by Maxwell and SU's College of Law. INSCT's deputy director, Robert B. Murrett (a retired vice admiral), recently oversaw a demographic analysis of veterans in the Syracuse area — a project undertaken with the Syracuse VA. The survey was conducted by students in a Maxwell MPA workshop. They identified and evaluated reasons veterans choose or avoid VA facilities for health care.
The complementary relationship of veterans studies and national security concerns is no accident. William Banks, a professor of public administration and international affairs who directs INSCT, is also a distinguished fellow at the veterans institute; Murrett, INSCT's deputy director, is an inaugural member of the IVMF board. Even apart from the new veterans institute, Murrett says INSCT's work related to veterans is growing "pretty dramatically."
As the researchers' work builds, the IVMF's function as a clearinghouse on matters of military and veteran families will grow in importance. Its findings will inform policy makers, advocates, and veteran families themselves. It's a contribution all involved believe is vital.
Says Murrett, "The support and care of veterans and military families is a national security imperative if the United States is to maintain an all-volunteer force."
— Renée Gearhart Levy