Here's the initial coverage of the LSVs group's beginnings (from The Richmond Times Dispatch):
As a Marine, Greg Serwo served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. But it didn't prepare him for the challenges of college.
"The transition coming out of the Marine Corps is tough enough, but the transition to student on top of that . . . " said Serwo, who arrived at Longwood University in August 2007.
So Serwo, 27, is organizing Longwood Student Veterans -- a support group to help combat veterans transition into civilian life and college.
The group's first meeting last month drew 12 people, including four professors. The school has about 40 people receiving some form of GI benefits as veterans, spouses or dependents.
The need for schools to have people versed in the provisions of the new GI Bill, health care and other benefits through the federal government is going to increase as more veterans enroll, said Susan Stinson, a lecturer in English and creative writing at Longwood.
What's more important, Stinson said, is the need for crisis counseling: The school's counseling center does an excellent job on a one-on-one basis during the day, but there also is a need for after-hours help. The veterans' group will provide the much-needed peer support, organizers said.
To illustrate just how important such counseling is, Stinson points to the establishment of the Virginia Wounded Warrior Program and statistics that say large percentages of veterans have a mental-health condition or reported experiencing a traumatic brain injury, or meet the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder or depression.
Stinson joins Mary Carroll-Hackett, an assistant professor of English and coordinator of the creative writing concentration, in advising the group.
Marine Corps veteran Dustin L. Meadows, 21, who served in Iraq, said such a group will be "a big help to veterans on campus."
The transition from soldier to student was difficult, he said, "because you are with a group so long and out of a classroom for a year, you have trouble getting back into the swing of things and everything seems so insignificant."
Near the end of the spring 2007 semester, Serwo started looking for a way to work with veterans. First he looked at working with homeless vets and then transporting veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center to campus or having representatives from various schools visit the hospital.
Eventually, Serwo said, he would like to see groups such as the one being established spread to other campuses and work together to take on such projects.
Kenneth B. Perkins, executive assistant to the president for student success at Longwood, said he hopes the group can meet with top school officials "just to let them know that this exists."
Contact Jamie C. Ruff at (434) 223-3678 or jruff@timesdispatch.com.