Across the state, resources are being pulled together to make returning to school easier for military personnel.
Wednesday was the first brainstorming session since legislation passed this year to create campus environments that help veterans succeed in college.
Standing next to the American flag, a Concord University vocal student sings the national anthem. A room full of education officials are standing with their hands over their hearts.
The West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission organized the meeting in Athens. It's the first meeting for a taskforce charged with developing campus programs and policies that consider the needs of student veterans.
“I think that most of us who are not from military families or not associated with veterans," Hilda Heady, Senior Vice President of Atlas Research said, "do not realize how much rural people contribute to the military service picture in the United States."
“Rural people have always answered the call when it’s important to serve and a lot of that has to do with their sense of duty patriotism and of course the way rural people are raised in terms of having a responsibility to give back," she said.
"A lot of our rural families teach that it’s their responsibility to do that service."
But at the same time Heady says those same people have limited access to help when they return home from military duty.
“Like all rural people in terms of having adequate access to primary care and mental health services," she said,"our returning soldiers and veterans who live in rural areas have even more of a challenge getting the kind care they need because of the distance that they have to drive to get to a VAMC medical center."
Skip Gephart is Administrator of the Office of Veterans Education and Training Programs at the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission. He says those challenges extend into higher education.
“A lot of people from rural areas tend to think they can’t go to college,” Gephart said. "Half the veterans who have benefits use them the other half don’t for whatever reason."
"If we can reach that half and I think we can make the case that many of them are located in our rural areas, we can reach them and say you can do it … I think they will show up and begin seeing that yes we can do this."
Jeremy Harrison is a Social Worker with the Wheeling Vet Center. He knows what soldiers are going through, because he dealt with some of the same problems when he returned to school after serving in the war in Iraq.
“A lot of them have readjustment issues, difficulty concentrating sitting in class that’s one example," Harrison said.
"They may get up to leave the professor not understand why they are leaving."
“There are problems with trust there are problems with anxiety, definitely security issue when they are in classrooms most of them will have a tendency to sit towards the back of the room so they can see everybody in the room, they don’t like anyone to sit behind them."
Harrison says each campus is different and should tailor programs for veterans to fit its needs, but he says respect should be a key element of every school's approach.
“They want to feel as though they are important to the campus just as much if not more important than the average students," he said. "Many of them feel, they feel lower than the average person on campus because they are not getting the needs that they have met."
Concord University President Gregory Aloia is chairman of the taskforce developing campus programs to help veterans succeed in school.