Student Veterans of America
We're privileged to have a meaningful and ongoing partnership with Student Veterans of America.
SVA does a lot of important work in this space - they conduct much-needed research that informs how we think about and serve student veterans, they do impactful veterans advocacy work on Capitol Hill and beyond, they connect student veterans to meaningful employment opportunities - but at CVTI, we are most grateful for the community building they do, especially at SVA NatCon. This annual conference - the largest gathering of student veterans in the world - is a unique opportunity for student veterans and veteran-serving professionals to gather and have critical conversations about why this work is so important and how we can continue to do it better.
NatCon 2025 was an extra special NatCon for CVTI as we were honored to receive the 2024 William Pearson Tolley Champion for Veterans in Higher Education Award. This award recognizes a visionary leader whose dedication and advocacy have transformed the landscape of higher education for student veterans. While we appreciate - and are deeply humbled by - this acknowledgement, we understand that our work is both inspired and made possible by our own incredible veteran community right here at Columbia. Watching our student veterans enrich the Columbia classroom has taught us some really valuable lessons, and our job - and privilege! - is to use that learning to improve the lives and experiences of veterans, transitioning service members, and their families at Columbia and beyond.
One of the most exciting collaborations we recently completed with SVA was a presentation at SVA NatCon called "The Ultimate Imposter Syndrome: How to be a Civilian Military-Serving Professional." CVTI has been working on impostor feelings - what they are, how we talk about them as a society, how we understand and misunderstand them - for several years. Most of our work on impostor experiences has focused on helping veterans and veteran-serving professionals build a new narrative context around impostor feelings that reads them neither as a damaging psychological phenomenon to be managed, mitigated, treated, or cured, nor as personal or professional liability, but rather as an organic byproduct of aspiration, striving, risk-taking, and growth.
At NatCon 2025, our Director of Education, R.J. Jenkins, partnered with Betsy Montañez of the New School to put together a workshop about why we should stop apologizing for and start owning our civilian-ness as we engage in the critical work of veteran advocacy and what strategies we have used to connect with our student veterans in an authentic, trust-building way.