UNLV center helps veterans transition from military to academic life

Army veteran Franklin La Rosa Diaz credits UNLV’s Military and Veterans Support Center for helping ease his transition from the service to civilian and academic life.

He’s just one of the many veterans helped by the center, which celebrated its 10-year anniversary two weeks ago.

The center offers support to veteran students by helping them enroll in classes, ensuring that their military benefits are available to them, helping with housing on campus and connecting them to other resources.

According to the university, UNLV’s student-veteran population has a graduation rate of 70 percent. About 1,600 student-veterans currently attend classes.

“The transition wouldn’t be this good if it wouldn’t be for Ross and the whole team here,” La Rosa Diaz said, referring to center director Ross Bryant. “That helped me a lot through my entire enrollment process and what to do, and they all have always been my backup, I really love this office.”

La Rosa Diaz moved to Las Vegas from Peru in 2016 and started going to the College of Southern Nevada to learn to speak English.

He first tried to enlist in the Marines after he got a recruitment letter, and his father supported the idea of military service. But problems with his paperwork kept La Rosa Diaz from the Marine Corps, but he joined the Army after a friend at CSN encouraged him to enlist.

La Rosa Diaz served in the Army from 2018 until February of this year. He enrolled at UNLV in this year’s spring semester and fully separated from the military in February.

The 24-year-old Army veteran described how the office helped guide him through enrollment and into his life at UNLV.

Now La Rosa Diaz is one of the leads at the center and enjoys helping veterans experiencing a similar situation as the one he did.

“It just feels great, to be honest,” La Rosa Diaz said, “because that’s the same help I had when I came to the office. And that’s the same help I’m trying to give them.”

Omar Lopez, a 27-year-old student-veteran at UNLV, didn’t land a spot at the center, but Bryant connected him to the Peer Advisors for Veteran Education program, where he now works.

PAVE, a peer support program founded at the University of Michigan, focuses on supporting incoming veteran students by connecting them to helpful resources and regularly checking in with them to see how they are doing.

Lopez, who served in the Marines Corps from 2016 to 2020, said that he connects with other Marine veterans the most.

“Sometimes only a Marine can really understand a Marine,” he said.

When talking about his time in the service, Lopez called his four years in the Marines “the best and worst years” of his life, recalling the brutal conditions but also great camaraderie and friendships.

While the transition to civilian life was hard, Lopez said he has found that he can connect with other Marines going through difficulties and needing help. He said he can understand and relate to other Marines because of their shared experiences.

“They’re hard to deal with,” said Lopez, “and usually it takes someone who’s been in their shoes to really understand.”

For La Rosa Diaz, the work and the camaraderie of the Military and Veterans Support Center provides a strong draw.

“When I look at them, it’s like my own family,” he said. “I always come to the office, there’s no day where I don’t show up to the office. They say that I live here.”

Contact Mark Credico at mcredico@reviewjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @MarkCredicoII.