All across America and around the world, this
is Veterans Radio. This is Veterans Radio. Good
day. I'm Jim Fossone. I'm the Officer of the
Deck today here on Veterans Radio and thanks
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Podcasts. We post something new every week and
you're going to find it informative. We want
to welcome to Veterans Radio Navy Lieutenant
Commander retired. He actually carries a lot
of hats and a lot of titles. It's also known
as Dr. Eric Fretz. Eric, welcome to Veterans
Radio. Pleasure to be here, Jim. Always fun.
As I say, you wear a lot of hats. We're going
to talk today about two of them. Your long -term
involvement with Student Veterans Association,
or SVA, but also Veterans Studies Association.
So before we get there, though, How did a nice
kid like you end up in the US Navy for 20 years?
Yeah, it was very interesting. There's no history
of service in my immediate family tree either.
Everyone was very puzzled, but I really attributed
to just some very good mentors I had in the Boy
Scouts. I was very into Boy Scouts. I was an
Eagle Scout and am an Eagle Scout. I got a lot
out of that program and I had a number of mentors
there that were very instrumental in my growth
as a leader and understanding what I wanted to
do with my life. The one thing I really knew
going off to college was that I liked leadership.
I liked helping groups of people do interesting
things. And my mentors all told me, if you want
to go where leadership is prized and do it the
hardest way in difficult situations, the military
is where to go. I ended up going to Michigan
on a Navy scholarship and that was the beginning
of many decades and three deployments across
two wars and ships and whatnot. I even spent
the last year of my career on a no -notice emergency
mobilization to work with the Army's 18th Airborne
Corps in downtown Baghdad of all things. So my
career was non -standard but very enjoyable and
I look back on it fondly. has a special place
in your heart and you continue to move all of
those leadership and military issues along. I
should point out, you have a PhD in psychology
and education from the University of Michigan.
You've taught for many years at the university,
both entrepreneurship and emotional intelligence,
which is both very interesting issues. had thousands
of students go through, and many, many, many
of them had been veterans. So along the way,
you got yourself involved with, I think you were
the faculty mentor, if that's the right word,
for Student Veterans Association at the university.
Actually, a member back in the day, so it got
founded in 2008. I was a member in 2009, graduated
in 2010, and then just became sort of an alumni
slash faculty helper, because that group meant
so much to me when I was a student. I just said,
I'm all in on these guys, whatever they need.
Well, again, that's been displayed over decades
now. But tell us a little bit about what Student
Veterans Association, SDA, is all about. Who
makes it up? Where do you find these kind of
groups? Give the listening audience that thumbnail.
For sure, for sure. I mean, veterans on campus
had always been sort of poorly served and disorganized
and kind of fairly lonely until around 2008.
And as the first waves of the war on terror vets
were coming back and were starting to utilize
something called the GI Bill, which is the new
GI Bill, there were just a number of veterans
and independent areas around the nation that
had started making veteran groups, voluntary
associations, where they could get together with
other veterans on campus. And a number of them
became aware of each other. And then they gathered
in Washington, DC. And in 2008, January 23, actually
2008, so really the anniversary is coming up.
a number of them got together and said, let's
formally make a sort of a national organization,
very small at first. It was a nonprofit. And
over the years has grown steadily with the support
of major donors, Walt Disney and any other number
of corporate donors. And they began sort of formalizing
the process of being an organization and supporting
the founding of chapters. And so now you have
something like 16, 1700 chapters all across the
United States, everything from community colleges
all the way up to. chapters in graduate school,
law schools, all over the place. And all of these,
they ebb and flow obviously as students come
in and graduate and the leadership changes. So
on any given time on any given campus, they may
or may not have an SVA. It may be particularly
large or somewhat small. But the point is they
consistently are there and have guidance and
help from the national organization. The national
SVA maintains a really extensive network of people
who could coach them and great online resources
and they host seminars. and have like regional
conferences and then of course a big national
conference every year and they've had about 18
of those this most I just got back from the 18th
annual national convention out in Colorado Springs
and that's a wonderful chance to get thousands
and thousands I think almost 2 ,000 veterans
came together out there enjoyed you know almost
a hundred different sessions major keynotes we
had General Mattis out there he brought the house
down amazing we had three or four Medal of Honor
recipients Clinton Ramesha, Air Force Mass Sergeant
Joe Bass, just amazing Medal of Honor winners
sharing their stories. It's a really powerful
bonding time out there at NatCon. So that's the
SVA sort of in a nutshell. They've been around
for a really long time. People may not think
about it this way, veterans may not think about
it this way, but it's really transitional help,
isn't it? So many guys go into the military,
they weren't ready for college. They kind of
come out, and life is so different. It's not
organized. It's not anything. A little bit overwhelming.
Yeah, very different. And we talk about transitional
problems a lot. But those who then go on to college,
whether it's community college, four -year degrees,
graduate schools, can find themselves kind of
in a transitional fog. And SDA is an affinity
group for those folks that they feel more connected.
Do I have that right? Absolutely, and it definitely
mitigates. I mean, the research is really clear.
It also, you know, later on, maybe we can talk
about my work with the Journal for Veterans Studies
and the Veterans Studies Association. But the
research on veterans in this transition mode
is very clear and they have any number, probably
a half dozen to a dozen major issues such as,
you know, having age issues, having a lot of
non -traditional student issues like being older,
having kids, being married. They have the financial
thing. A lot of them are the first time at college.
All of these things are well known to administrators
as risk factors for performance. possibly dropping
out of college. And the SVA and SVA chapters
provide a really nice antidote to that. And in
some cases and some chapters like at Michigan,
when I was helping with it, we designed an entire
mini course that was all the lessons were specifically
addressed to focus on these things that we knew
would trip up veterans. And we had a really healthy
ecosystem there that would. Deliberately teach
them all the things and prevent them from making
some of the common mistakes So that transition
is huge and at NatCon about I'd say at least
a quarter of the sessions at the National Convention
Are about transition helping people with transition
and building vibrant chapters that can assist
with this. So you're right I want to talk about
NatCon, but before we get there I kind of want
to point out to our veteran radio listeners if
you're a veteran going back to school or if your
Spouses or your son or daughter are I think Dr.
Eric Frentz is saying encourage those folks to
get connected to the SGA at their university.
For sure and most universities will have parallel
to the SVA. They will have some sort of veteran
services office at a minimum like one person
and maybe a certifying official in some cases
like a place like say Syracuse that really has
it wired. I mean Syracuse has I don't know something
like 50 to 100 people in there because they have
the Institute for veteran military families.
I mean they have a machine there and lots of
places will have like say a half a dozen and
they will support what's called military affiliated
students. So in many places for the GI Bill.
Only half the people on the GI Bill are actually
veterans, the other half are like the kids of
retirees. And they're a little different, obviously,
but they still get the same supports. And some
SVA's welcome them in, others not, but it really
varies. But they're just great supports. If you're
using GI Bill benefits on campus, there are support
structures for you and you should go seek them
out for sure. Again, it's so important on transition
and sometimes we just want to do it ourselves.
Yeah, and there's there's a lot of veterans who
are thinking about going to college and get intimidated
or think well I'll just go to community college
because a big college would never accept me and
so I want to say encourage one of the greatest
nationwide vet charities I know of is warrior
scholar project and you can you can Google them
where scholar project They've been around for
a long time I was with them right when they started
back at Yale and I brought their first Expansion
program to the University of Michigan years and
years ago with a wonderful friend Ryan Pavell
who's now the CEO and they do fantastic work
nationwide. They have over 20 campus sessions
every summer. And you sign up with Warrior Scholar.
You get to go to one of these amazing campuses,
one of these amazing universities. You get to
work with professors there. You get essentially
an academic boot camp that shows you. how to
perform and that you can perform at a high level
at a top -tier university. And this is really
transformative for a lot of students, a lot of
veterans. I mean, pretty much all the veterans
that do it say it's an amazing experience. So
if you're a veteran thinking about going back
to school or even if you're at community college
and thinking about making the jump, the Warrior
Scholar Project is really the best two weeks
you could spend in the summer. And as long as
you can get to that campus, everything else is
paid for. So it's amazing. That's a great program.
Thanks for bringing that forward. Because again,
Part of what we try to do is share information
that people may not know. And hopefully, they
say it may be to their grandson or granddaughter
or niece or nephew. It may not be directly to
them that we're getting this information out,
but we want it to filter down. So it's important
stuff. What triggered this talk is I saw some
comments you made about being at SVA NatTow.
So they just had their national convention. Talk
to us about why there's a national convention,
what it's about. I saw that you've been at least
a dozen of the 18. I think you can't remember
them all as part of it. Exactly. Tell us about
the last one. Sure. Well, this is really wonderful.
It's the second time we did two in a row out
there at Colorado Springs. And I was out there
with my good friends, Jared Lyon, who had been
the CEO and president for just as long as I can
remember. And he's recently stepped down. He's
finishing his Ph .D. So he stepped down. They're
going to be a new CEO. And then, you know, he
has a couple of partners in crime I'm good friends
with. Abby Kinch was basically a Totally. She
was a very busy woman organizing and handling
a lot of the conference. She also did a really
cool research think tank that I participated
in. That's one of many things. It's a chance
to gather all these like -minded veterans and
also some special interest areas. They had not
just the research think tank, but the policy
think tank, and they have summits of other groups
as well. And you know major nationwide leaders
from different groups are coming together there
as well we have a big conference floor where
there are just hundred plus boots and Veterans
student veterans can go in there and basically
get instantly hired I mean the corporations are
on the track of hey veterans Yeah, and so it
is not uncommon to go to SVA netcom Go and get
interviewed by half dozen places and walk out
of there with a job offer. So that's really wonderful
And they do all sorts of coaching. TikTok is
there, and they're helping people with headshots.
And it's just a really great professional environment
for veterans. When it started, it was mostly
just get the chapters together and let's all
figure out what we're doing. But within four
or five years, it had become, hey, let's make
this a thing. And you started to see corporate
sponsors and people signing up for these booths
and all this value added, and then all these
great sessions as well. And I've presented there,
gosh, half a dozen times on different topics.
And it's always really been fantastic, great
response. just an eagerly anticipated thing every
year. The next one will be next year to be January
4th through 6th at the Gaylord Texan Resort just
outside of Dallas. So we'll be going someplace
a little warmer. There you go. Good choice. But
one of the things we've certainly noticed over
the years of talking to veterans on Veterans
Radio, Dr. Eric Fretz, who is also a board member
of Veterans Radio. Indeed. When you transition
out of the military, you're kind of behind your
contemporaries. Those folks who go in, maybe
they didn't spend four years or eight years or
12 years. And so you don't have that natural
network of business contacts that you've developed
for moving jobs and whatnot. And you break with
the military, you kind of lose that network as
well. It sounds to me like SVA is a little bit
of Again bridging that divide of saying you ought
to come network with these guys because these
are the future business leaders and Contacts
that you're gonna want to have am I reading that
right? Yeah for sure. That's definitely an effect,
right? I mean at any given local chapter There's
networks are like student veterans who worked
with me when I was very primary for the SVA there
of course I had my enormous network and if somebody
wanted to somebody wanted to Do something in
ophthalmology and I would call my you know something
in there and I would call my contact within the
U of M and I would get them an interview those
sort of things very powerful and then at the
national level when you go to NatCon you are
basically Injected into this sort of system.
That's all there. There's just a whole bunch
of people there at NatCon who are there to pull
in the veterans that are walking by. If you were
just in your hometown, you wouldn't have that.
And even if you cold called them, you wouldn't
have that. So that's really an advantage, yeah.
And I think veterans, it is true that they have
sort of missed out on some things, but also I
think they tend to over -focus on that. Over
-focus on the fact that they've built these tremendous
skill sets. And so I always remember this one.
It's a gentleman, Will, that you know. Very,
very, very awesome guy. And he had gotten his
triple, his triple major bachelor's degree, and
was telling me how, oh, but, you know, they want
to interview me for this thing, and it's an executive
position, and I... I was just a staff sergeant
or whatever. I was like, oh, Will, come on. You
were in combat. You led all these people. You
were in charge of millions of dollars. You have
a bachelor's degree. You are every bit as good
as any mid -career officer that got recruited
in to do these junior executive positions. You
stop undercutting yourself and get in there and
go. And he did, and he did great. But it is common
that the vets are not really realizing how much
their service and particularly their non -commissioned
officer leadership has prepared them as long
as they can effectively de -green, that's the
term I use, de -green and get the military sharp
edge off, but then take all those skills, that
loyalty, that hard work, that team focus, that's
so valuable in the real world. Well, and a lot
of that are those soft skills you can't teach,
right? They're getting grained in your DNA in
the military to be able to follow orders, show
up on time. work hard, you know, not whine, all
those sorts of things. I always laugh. I worked
on a big committee. I was the chair of a big
committee about military stuff at Michigan for
years, and I always laughed because I would park
my car near the administration building 10 minutes
before the meeting. And at five minutes before
the meeting, I would step out of my car and begin
the three minute walk to the lobby with the and
as I walked from my car to the door from three
different directions, the three commanders of
the ROTC units would just appear walking and
they were all in the military, simultaneous time
on top and all the missiles arrive at the same
time. Right. And and I would always laugh and
I'd be like, boy, oh, boy, we are just all peas
in a pod. Right. Early is on time. One time is
late. That is ingrained. Well, one of the things
that you also have a finger in is the Veterans
Studies Association, which was also a part of
being at NACMP. So tell us a little bit about
the Veterans Studies Association. This is essentially,
it's a group of scholars that has gradually built
up nationwide who are interested in studying
veteran populations and doing research and sharing
that research, collaborating, and in the end,
trying to build a nationwide academic community.
Because if you think there are lots of areas,
particularly with marginalized populations, so
you've heard of women's studies, African -American
studies, things like that, where these are very
important disciplines that organize research
around a scholarly pursuit and sort of build
a structure, and again, a discipline, right?
So you can think of the American Psychological
Association, and I'm a member of that. It's enormous,
with tens of thousands of people, and they have
huge million dollar conferences, and everyone,
they have a journal, they have multiple magazines,
and everyone in the profession kind of is grounded
through this. academic entity, right? And so
we would love the Veteran Studies Association
to grow into that. And it's been on a steady
growth patterns, a couple hundred members nationwide.
It was formally founded in twenty nineteen, but
it existed long before that. There were groups
of individuals in Virginia and other places that
were doing a veterans and society conference
and sharing their interest in studying veterans.
And some of this was, you know, how doing special
English class, English professors, English professors
that were doing special courses on creative writing.
just using veterans and grounding it in their
war experiences, things like that, or individuals
who are in social work programs and looking at
PTSD. So we're trying to create this discipline
where all of the, to be honest, there are thousands
of researchers nationwide who are doing research
directly or peripherally on veterans, don't really
see themselves as, oh yeah, I'm a veteran researcher.
They think I'm a PTSD researcher who looks at
veterans. We would love for them to sort of come
under this umbrella. build this veteran studies
out Morgan, you know, we have a big website that
can give you people lots of information. It's
a veteran ology. So veteran ology, veteran ology
.org. And you can also just search a veteran
studies association and you should find it. And
in there, there'll be links to our journal, the
journal of veteran studies, which has been around
since 2015 and has published coming up on probably
500 different articles, original research, book
reviews, all about veterans. So if you're doing
research in veterans, on veterans JBS is a good
place to try and publish if you're not publishing
somewhere else they're currently doing well i
think they do they do two big issues a year it's
an open open platform so there's no there's no
charge right it's open access to everybody it
is peer reviewed um so yeah it's uh the the JVS
and the VSA are sort of linked together loosely
um there's an independent editor for JVS Khadijah
Boyd who's doing fantastic work and um then the
VSA with Corin Hinton is the current president
and uh there's actually just so folks know what
we're talking about here there are four or well
there's like a total of six between six and twelve
programs nationwide that do either a bachelor's
degree a minor or a certificate in veterans or
military studies and that's really cool because
that means you can actually go somewhere and
get a degree in this and I think most veterans
should know about that because there is a really
when we're in the conferences the veterans are
so interested in sort of giving back to their
community and participating in research and conducting
research. Anyway, if you're a graduate student
who's interested in doing that kind of research
or just being a researcher anywhere in the veteran
space, you'd be crazy not to join the VSA because
we have conferences every two years. It's coming
up now. In March 26, the Veterans and Society
Conference is going to be at the University of
Chicago in Chicago. And they have a pre -conference
session where all the young researchers who are
working in the veterans research space can come
in and have all of these old, crusty PhD guys
like me just look at their research and give
them some tips and pointers in mentoring. That's
really powerful. I was at the SVA chairman's
reception and the gentleman came up to me along
with his friend and said, hey, you know, we're
PhD students and we've got so much help and been
such, it's such an, the help we've gotten from
the Veterans Studies Association just was critically
important to our progress. And I just thought,
well, isn't that wonderful, right, to hear, to
be at the one conference and hear about the other
one, so. Well, and there's so much information
that the VA and the government and others develop
on. on veterans, but so few, such a small percentage
of the population, serves. It's sort of a little
minority group, and it's really important for
the rest of the country to realize all the good
stuff going on as compared to the general press
and a lot of successful veteran business owners.
You've spent a lot of your career teaching veterans
and teaching in the entrepreneurial space. Talk
a little bit about that, Barry. It's amazing.
Veterans are very well suited for entrepreneurship.
And so I have I've worked with well over 5000
undergraduate veterans, some of them being student
veterans. And I've also worked with student veterans
separately. So, for example, at the local Washtenaw
Community College, I'm the entrepreneur in residence
for veterans. for their entrepreneurship center.
And taught classes over there in entrepreneurship
dedicated to veterans. Michigan has a dedicated
veteran entrepreneurship program that's run through
the state. So there's lots of potential there
because everybody has the potential, if they're
creative, anybody can be an entrepreneur and
just need some guidance and some help with those
steps. But veterans are particularly good at
it because particularly when it comes to like
taking over say a franchise or starting a business,
veterans are capable of working and It put it
bluntly suffering right, but you know military
teaches you to be good at suffering in the sense
of You were putting up with the hard work and
crap at a level that a lot of people wouldn't
and so you'll come out of your military service
and You'll work really hard in a way that seems
easier to you because it is but other people
will look and be like wow. Why are you? Why were
you putting up with that? And you're like, but
this is so much better than what I used to have.
What do you mean? And so veterans in that sense
are kind of goofy because they're not miscalibrated,
but they're calibrated differently basically
by their experiences. So they do a really good
job. Most franchise companies love to have veterans
come in and take over a franchise. That's one.
And then two, even if they're just going to do
their own thing, they're particularly good at
the grind basically. And so I've coached any
number of veterans to success with their ideas.
And so, yeah. Well, again, I think that it's
been fascinating to watch over the years work
in that space and do what you're doing with younger
veterans, student veterans. Dr. Fretz, we appreciate,
and I mean, Dr. Eric Fretz is not the doctor
he's married to. That's right. There are many,
many Dr. Fretz's. I'm the lesser, yes. She's
the real doctor. So again, I want to thank you
for the time that you've taken with Veterans
Radio Day. share some of the experiences out
of the SVA National Convention that you just
attended and informing us about the Veterans
Studies Association and its upcoming program
as well. Eric, thanks for your time today. My
pleasure. It's been great. Anytime. And I want
to thank everybody for listening to Veterans
Radio today. I am Jim Fossone. It's been a pleasure
to be your host. I'm a Veterans disability lawyer
at Legal Help for Veterans and you can reach
us at 800 -693 -4800 or legalhelpforveterans
.com on the web. You can follow Veterans Radio
on Facebook. and listen to its podcasts and internet
radio shows by visiting us at veteransradio .org.
That's veteransradio .org. We would again want
to thank our national sponsors, the National
Veterans Business Development Council, nvbdc
.org. Legal Help for Veterans, a veterans disability
law firm with a national practice before the
VA. It can help you on your claims and your appeals.
It can be reached at legalhelpforveterans .com
or 1 -800 -693 -4800. We also want to thank our
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Post 423, the American Legion. Erwin Preskin,
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Health Care System, and certainly the National
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can be a sponsor by going to veteransradio .org,
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help us out. Keep this program alive for the
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Thank you.