The University is home to about 40,000 students from many different walks of life. About 214 of these students have life experiences radically different from the rest of the student body: they are veterans of the United States military. After immersion in the chaotic life of wartime, they are reintroduced into the life of higher education.

Since the U.S. is currently involved in two large-scale conflicts in the Middle East, many of these vets have served overseas in combat zones. For these former military personnel, the University is a different world. For many veterans, the transition from soldier, sailor, airman or Marine to full-time student isn’t easy.

A different experience

In the winter of 2007, Eric Fretz, a lieutenant commander in the Navy Reserve and a Ph.D. candidate, was involuntarily recalled to serve a year-long tour in Iraq.

“Seven days before Christmas, I was working at my wife’s medical clinic. Seven days before Christmas,” said Fretz who was in his 19th year in the military and was planning to retire. “The guy on the phone — he had this British accent, it was the funniest thing — he said: ‘This is Petty Officer so-and-so, from New Orleans. Are you sitting down, sir?’

I said, ‘Uh, I’m standing, Petty Officer, but go ahead. Pass your traffic, what do you got?’

‘Well, I’ve got orders for you, sir. You’re being involuntarily mobilized. We’re sending you to Iraq.’

I remember sitting down, looking out at that snow fall … and I said, ‘When do I leave?’ ”

After that conversation, Fretz had 20 days before he would spend at least one year in Iraq. “I couldn’t tell my wife for two days,” Fretz remembered.

During his tour in Iraq, Fretz served with the Army’s 18th Airborne Corps. He explained that though he was in the Navy, he was assigned to work with the Army because the Marine Corps were so strained.

Fretz has made the transition from sailor to student several times: he alternated from active duty to reserves and obtained two bachelor’s degrees, a master’s and a Ph.D. along the way.

“It’s always a significant thing,” said Fretz, who received his first bachelor’s degree from the University and was a member of the NROTC. “Very quickly, you get pulled across that boundary. Either you can thrive in that environment, or you can’t.”

Not all military personnel on campus are veterans. The Tri-Service ROTC prepares cadets and midshipmen to become officers in the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, but some of the ROTC staff members and individuals training to become officers have served time in Iraq or Afghanistan while others served during the Gulf War.

Capt. Rodney Sapp of the Marine Corps is stationed in the Naval ROTC unit. He advises Marines in the unit and served six months in Iraq during 2006. For Sapp, the awareness required of an active-duty soldier was hard to shake when he returned to the States.

“The most difficult thing was coming down from the high tempo of operations,” Sapp said.

“Being in the combat zone, you’re always on the alert, no matter what it is. Even if it’s a small plastic bottle … and it looks like it’s out of place, you kind of zone in on it. Well, plastic bottles are around here all the time. So you may still tend to look at that plastic bottle the same way you did in Iraq. So it’s this thing of looking around, always figuring out, always assessing my environment when it’s pretty safe. I still do that sometimes.”

According to Fretz, time in a war zone takes its toll on the average soldier.

“For those who go into a combat zone, for those who actually have to deal with people trying to kill them … That’s a problem. That’s not normal. That damages people,” explained Fretz, who also received a doctorate from the University’s Combined Program in Education and Psychology in December 2010.

Anthony Woodward, a second-year graduate student in the Ross School of Business and former Army captain, left the military after his second tour in Iraq.

“The continued deployments, they were taking me away from family, friends, my 20s. So I decided to get out,” Woodward said. “I couldn’t take it anymore.”

Woodward, like hundreds of thousands of other veterans across the country, decided to head back to the classroom.

Becoming a Wolverine

The first step for veterans who choose to go back to school is to get accepted. That’s where the University’s Student Veterans Assistance program comes in.

Philip Larson is the transition specialist with the Office of New Student Programs and chair of the University Council on Student Veterans. Larson’s job is to help veterans transition from active duty military life to student life.

“The chain of the command is pretty direct in the military … the University is not that hierarchical,” said Larson, who is also an Air Force veteran.