‘Razorvets’ to be hailed at inaugural UA event

Staff retreat spurs focus on military

The University of Arkansas at Fayetteville’s efforts to recruit and support more military veterans as students will grow more Friday when it hosts its inaugural “Razorvets” banquet at the Janelle Y. Hembree Alumni House.

“Razorvets: Celebrating Veterans” will honor UA faculty members, staff members and students who are veterans or currently serving in the U.S. armed forces, Erika Gamboa, director of the university’s Veterans Resource and Information Center, said Wednesday.

The banquet, which starts at 6 p.m. Friday, will feature the presentation of a special flag by Fort Smith’s188th Fighter Wing, dubbed “The Flying Razorbacks,” to Graham Stewart, executive director of the Arkansas Alumni Association.

UA officials said the flag flew over Afghanistan “in one of its A-10 Warthog fighter jets.”

“It flew outside the maintenance complex for about four months at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, during what the Afghans call their windy season,” said 188th spokesman Maj. Heath Allen.

“It took a beating in the hot Afghan wind and sun but developed a rugged charm,” Allen, an executive staff officer with the Fort Smith unit of the Arkansas Air Na-tional Guard, added. “It was a reminder of home for about 375 of our deployed airmen. It provided our airmen a brief sense of comfort in an austere environment.”

The banquet’s keynote speaker will be Col. Dennis May, deputy director of the Veterans Employment Services Office for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. May graduated from UA in 1981 with a bachelor’s degree in public administration.

Sponsors of the event are the Veterans Week Celebration Committee and Tyson Foods Inc. Co-hosts are the veterans center and the Arkansas Alumni Association.

Around the time Congress passed the Post-9/11 GI Bill in the summer of 2008, UA began ramping up its servicesand offerings for veterans with an eye toward not only increasing enrollment, but also to help vets get their education and more easily find jobs after returning home from service.

The new GI Bill was established to pay benefits for education sought on or after Aug. 1, 2009, and offered more support than the existing Montgomery GI Bill, UA officials and Fayetteville campus veterans said before it went into effect.

By December 2008, UA announced it was working on a plan to establish 20 onetime supplemental veterans scholarships beginning in the 2009-10 academic year.

Also in 2008, UA created the UA Veterans Task Force in anticipation of new college enrollees it expected thanks to the new GI Bill from among returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.

A registered student organization also recently organized. Dubbed Military Past and Present on Campus, the group recently changed its name to Razorback Student Veterans, Gamboa said Wednesday.

By June 2009, UA announced it was establishing the Veterans Resource and Information Center and hiring Gamboa, an Army Reserve veteran and UA alumna, as its director.

The university also was among the first four schools nationwide to partner with the Pat Tillman Foundation to offer its scholarships for veterans, Gamboa said. The UA is one of 14 schools currently participating.

Today, Gamboa said, UA has added more scholarship programs serving veterans and those who are serving or have served active duty. These include the MilitaryService Member Scholarship and Military Dependent Scholarship programs.

Gamboa credited Kabrina Gardner as the brainchild of the Razorvets banquet.

Gardner is the alumni association’s outreach support supervisor, and is responsible for working with all demographics of UA students, alumni and nonalumni members known as “friends.”

During an Aug. 6 retreat, alumni association staff members discussed which groups it could serve better. Gardner said the staff settled on nontraditional students, the older population, young alumni, professionals with and without children - and veterans.

They decided on a banquet.

“To make sure that we always know they’re Razorback Hogs, if you will,” Gardner said. “That’s how we came up the name Razorvets.”

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 11/08/2012

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