Tanya Brashers, a second-year student at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service, was recently named Coordinator of the Pensacola State College Veterans Student Success Center.
The newly-formed Student Success Center is funded by a grant from the United States Department of Education. The center will assist PSC’s student-veterans with advising and will help to provide other academic resources. Under Brashers’ direction, the center will also coordinate outreach and recruitment to veterans in the Pensacola community.
“We want veterans to come to PSC,’’ Brashers said. “We want to bridge gaps and identify hurdles that veterans are facing. I’m going to identify where those gaps are and what we can do to bridge them. Some veterans start college and then stop. It will be my job to try to identify why. If they’re not in college but want to, we want to do what we can to assist them.”
Brashers, who grew up in Yazoo City, Miss., entered the U.S. Navy at the age of 19. A third-generation sailor, Brashers was a Navy corpsman during her five years of service, including duty at the Naval Hospital Pensacola. She entered the Navy knowing that G.I. Bill benefits could help her realize her college aspirations once she completed her service.
Brashers went on to earn her associate’s degree from Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno, Nevada, and bachelor’s degree in social work from UA Little Rock. She served as chair of the Student Veterans for the Arkansas Veterans Coalition as a student at UA Little Rock. Brashers enrolled in Clinton School Online in March 2020 and will graduate with her Master of Public Service this spring.
“I’m excited about the opportunity to be able to pay forward the compassion and empowerment that was shown to me by many of my professors, advisors, and peers, some who were also veterans,” Brashers said.
PSC offers two other federally-funded TRIO programs – Veterans Upward Bound and Veterans Student Support Services – to assist specific veteran demographics and are capped at 150 student-veterans, but the Veterans Student Success Center will be different in that its services will be available to all student-veterans with no limits on its numbers.
Brashers said that she looks forward to applying lessons from her Clinton School curriculum to the Veterans Student Success Center.
“Courses provided at the Clinton School like Program Planning and Development, Program Evaluation, Communications and Social (Ex)Change, and Advocacy in Public Service have provided me essential tools to perform my new role at Pensacola State,” said Brashers. “I am creating a brand-new program from the ground up. The knowledge I have gained from amazing instructors such as Dean Hoffpauir, Dr. Park, and Dr. Richards will allow me to be successful in creating a sustainable and successful program.”
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