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Sam Dunaway | News Editor<\/span><\/p>\n Nine Western student veterans had the opportunity to attend the Student Veterans of America National Conference from Jan. 4-6, the largest annual gathering of student veterans in the nation. The students came back from the conference with knowledge, motivation and a 2018 Chapter of the Year title.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe knew going into the conference that we were one of the top five finalists for Chapter of the Year,\u201d remarked Shane Follett, chapter President. The national organization represents over 1500 chapters around the United States. \u201cWe were up against schools like Syracuse, UNLV, LSU. We were the only Division II school in the top five.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The annual National Conference is both a personal and professional development experience that many of the organization\u2019s members benefited from.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe networking opportunities for me especially are huge,\u201d Follett commented. \u201cI know student veterans from literally all over the country, but then on top of that, there\u2019s opportunities to network with people from D.C. in the national organization.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Laura Pettyjohn, the club\u2019s Communication Officer, explained the ways in which the conference is beneficial to all student veterans. \u201cYou have the seniors who look at it as a huge outreach opportunity. Who are getting ready to graduate and are looking at the next steps in their life and looking for those connections. And you also have the freshman and sophomores who are coming in and getting extremely motivated from it while they\u2019re also making those connections.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Cole Hendren, a first-year and new member of the organization, expressed his enjoyment of the experience and motivation to move the club forward. \u201cI want to do so many things now just from the three days that I was there\u2026 For any student veteran who is needing some motivation or some eye-opening to the opportunities that are laid out before them, this is the place to go. If you want to know who\u2019s out there working for you and wanting you to succeed, this is where you should be at. Because they\u2019re all there.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The Western SVA chapter has been an official club since the 2014-2015 school year, but Follett has seen the improvements and growth that the club has undergone in the past two years. The organization was awarded Club of the Year at the 2017 Leadership Recognition Night. Notable accomplishments by the organization include the campus-wide Food Drive, community Easter Egg Hunt, and the annual Memorial Day Banquet.<\/span><\/p>\n When asked why Western\u2019s chapter stands out from the rest, Follett replied, \u201cOur chapter is a little bit different from other chapters because our chapter is focused on service. We\u2019re a service-based chapter… I think it was a combination of the community service that we\u2019ve done, the outreach that we\u2019ve done, and recognition of how quickly we\u2019ve gotten to where we are.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s making an impact directly to your community and making it better than you found it, that\u2019s the biggest point,\u201d Vice President Jeremy Bulluss emphasized. \u201cWe want to make any type of impact we can on our community.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Contact the author at journalnews@wou.edu<\/span><\/p>\n Photo by: WOU.edu<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sam Dunaway | News Editor Nine Western student veterans had the opportunity to attend the Student Veterans of America National Conference from Jan. 4-6, the largest annual gathering of student veterans in the nation. The students came back from the conference with knowledge, motivation and a 2018 Chapter of the Year title. \u201cWe knew going […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1030,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1030"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6972\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}