NASPA 2026 Symposium for Military-Connected Students

We always look forward to the NASPA Symposium for Military-Connected Students, but this year’s event was particularly special.

We were thrilled that CVTI’s Director of Education, R.J. Jenkins, was invited to present two breakout sessions and, in a development that both surprised and humbled us, was asked to co-present on the plenary stage.

Here's how it happened. R.J. submitted a proposal for a breakout session at NASPA called "Real Talk: When A Student Veteran Makes You Want To Quit (And What To Do About It)." The title of the session was tongue-in-cheek on purpose, but the intent of the proposed engagement was deeply earnest. Veteran-serving professionals are among the most passionate and mission-driven in higher education—but that doesn’t make the work easy. While we often celebrate the leadership, adaptability, and discipline veterans bring to our campuses, we rarely make space for honest, professional conversations about the moments when the work of supporting them challenges us, frustrates us, and leaves us feeling depleted and defeated. The goal of this session was to try to tackle that reality head-on, in plain speak, and to take the discussions we only ever seem to have over coffee or at happy hour and bring them to the professional conference space in a serious way.

The breakout proposal was accepted, and R.J. was delighted by the prospect of offering the session to a group of colleagues at the conference.

But a few weeks prior to the conference, the organizers called R.J. ask if he might be willing to deliver the breakout session as a plenary engagement for the entire conference. R.J. was flattered, and his response was instant: "Yes, absolutely, but I am going to need some help."

He immediately began recruiting a merry (but also formidable) band of smart, experienced, huge-hearted (but also sassy) veteran-serving professionals who might be willing to do something crazy if he asked them. Enter Abby Kinch, Ph.D., Michael Kepner, Dr. Amy Morys, and Coby Dillard, MA-HSC, CMCC.

Together, they co-presented a plenary session re-titled "When the Work Is Hard: Strengthening Ourselves in Service to Student Veterans"— and according to R.J., it was, without question, one of the most meaningful professional experiences of his career. The team of colleagues tried to model what it looks like to talk openly about the hardest parts of work. The moments that test our patience. The moments that challenge our assumptions. The moments that make us question and doubt ourselves, and sometimes, make us want to give up.

Building conversations like that requires trust. It requires colleagues who are willing to be honest without being cynical, to be reflective without being defensive, to be vulnerable, and to be brave enough to be all of those things in front of a huge audience of colleagues and peers.

Abby, Mike, Amy, and Coby were smart, sincere, generous, and unafraid. It's not easy to have hard conversations like that on a stage in a hotel ballroom, but it becomes much easier when you're flanked by colleagues who are committed to strengthening our field—not just celebrating it.

And the session could not have been a success without the members of the audience who enriched the conversation by having the bravery to share their own experience and insights. Having practitioners from across the country tell us that the engagement really resonated with them was welcome validation that these kinds of discussions—candid, honest, nonjudgmental—need to be the rule, not the exception.