Andy Hibel 0:03
Welcome to the HigherEdJobs podcast. I'm Andy Hibel chief operating officer and one of the co-founders of HigherEdJobs.

Monica Sziron 0:09
And I'm Monica Sziron, assistant director of editorial strategy for HigherEdMilitary, a sister site of HigherEdJobs. we're so excited to have Courtney Swoboda here today. She's the director of military and veteran services at the University of Central Missouri, and she's our 2024 HigherEdMilitary Spotlight award winner. And you do so many amazing things in higher education. And beyond that, your peers have, nominated you and selected you for the award. So it's great to have you here and to kick things off to talk about your past and your career path. I'd love to hear from you. Tell us about your career path. How did your military service and experience help you when you moved into your role in higher education? And yeah, I'd love to learn more about you.

Courtney Swoboda 0:52
Absolutely. And thank you guys so much for having me today. So I kind of have just a random, I guess, career path. I kind of just fell into what I do. A little bit of background. So I'm also Air Force Reserve. I hit 11 years of service this year. I'm out of Whiteman Air Force Base. I absolutely love it. I feel like I wouldn't be where I'm at today without my service. It's really kind of provided me the pathway and really let me find myself. And I want to say I was lost, but I definitely needed some guidance in what I wanted to do and it definitely provided that for me, provided all these opportunities. So loading munitions on the A-10 aircraft. It doesn't really translate into the civilian world a whole lot, but I come from human resources. So I worked actually at the Missouri Veterans Commission and our Missouri Veterans Home here in Warrensburg. I love people. I love serving people and, helping my peers in the military just kind of it just kind of felt right. So, a position came open in our center here at UCM, and I was pursuing my bachelor's degree. They have great educational benefits on top of what I was receiving in the Air Force. So that's how I kind of found myself at UCM. And then I just kind of grew in the ranks and became the director. And it just truly has become a passion of mine. I'm so blessed with our leadership, and our support on campus. I know a lot of schools, people in my roles don't really have that, and they just kind of let me do my thing. They let me know what our students need and go after it. So that's just a little bit about my background and how I've made it here today.

Andy Hibel 2:19
And I want to make sure we don't miss this part of your background. You've done all those amazing things, but you also launched a statewide organization called MOVES, the Missouri Organization of Veteran Educational Specialists. Can you just tell us a little bit about that? How did you do that? How did you have the time to do that? And kind of let folks know what that's all about.

Courtney Swoboda 2:42
So I think in this role, if you don't have your peers, it's very difficult sometimes getting responses from the VA or just, you know, trying to interpret things that are going on is very, very difficult. So when I became the director, I reached out to peers in the state. I just started making phone calls. I actually called the Missouri State University director down there, Raylene Zeigler. She's amazing. And she and I had just a great connection. And then I started calling Amanda, down at CMO. And we just kind of created this friendship talking about things that are happening in our roles, things that are happening with the VA, all these different changes. And we're like, man, I really want to help other people in our roles within the state. So we started this Missouri collaboration group where we all just kind of met quarterly. It was very informal. We had guest speakers that would join us virtually; we'd have our representatives, we'd have different people from our Missouri State tuition assistance platforms, and our federal tuition assistance representatives in our state. They would come in and speak and train individuals. It's kind of grown into this thing where it's very informal and we want to help each other. So it's very peer-based. So we get those trainings. We host an in-person training annually. So we had our second one this year. I was at Missouri State University. UCM hosted the first one. So the schools, whoever takes the next training, they fund that. So there is no payment for membership for this group. And as I said, it's very peer-based. We really want to help each other and help grow in these roles. So anyways, we had a full day of training, brought in those representatives from across the state and really got the training that we felt that we needed. And also it allowed us to collaborate and get to know each other and learn about each other school's processes. Because I feel like the main part of this is, you know, students may not always find a home at UCM. I hope they do, but they may not. We may not offer the programs that they need. But now I know the representative at a school they may transfer to, I know their processes, I know how they work, and I know those POCs. And I think that's extremely important for this population that we serve because they love that handoff, they love knowing who they need to contact. So I think that's probably, in my opinion, the most beneficial thing about MOVES as we all are communicating, we're working together and we've really helped those students overall.

Monica Sziron 4:54
It's incredible to look at. You know, a lot of times we try to bucket everything, like we're all trying to serve veterans in their families and higher education. But you're right; like state to state, it is so different in regulations, rules, and laws. Missouri's a smaller Midwestern state. What advice do you have for other states and folks in your role trying to create that kind of camaraderie or, you know, getting people together? Is it just starting with cold calling, emailing them, and saying, hey, I'm Courtney?

Courtney Swoboda 5:27
That's honestly what I did. I called them and said, Hey, I'm new in my director role. I've been a school-certified official for years before then, but I wanted to get their opinion on things like how they process things and how we can streamline things. Are there issues that other school representatives could address to our leadership on campuses that they could address at the state level if they needed to? I think that's just been beneficial. So, just reaching out and talking to people, I think some people just get that. Oh, they're our competition. A lot of people in our role recruit. We don't have that in our MOVES group. It's really peer-based. We're here to help. All schools are included. So it's not just certain schools we All schools are welcome to join this. We have a listserv. We have school officials that post things all the time. Like, I have no idea how to process this. Can someone help me? And when they might think that might be a dumb question to reach out to an ELR, which is also known as an education liaison representative. I think that's really important we're just there to kind of support each other, and it's kind of off the record too. Like it's just very informal, very informal.

Monica Sziron 6:29
That's awesome.

Andy Hibel 6:31
What is your day-to-day like as director of military and veterans services on your campus? And I'm going to add to that I heard you're also teaching a class this semester. How do you feel about teaching and how it might affect the professional experience you have as director of military and veterans services?

Courtney Swoboda 6:47
So I always get asked this. We have a bunch of government relations that come into our center, special guests that come in, and they always ask us, what do we do here in the center? And I always respond with what do we not do? I always say at our center, we do a lot. I am a busy person. My staff are busy people, and we truly love what we do. You can feel the passion when you come in here, and all the people who visit agree. We process all VA educational benefits, military tuition assistance, federal and state. And one thing that sets it aside is we process military transcripts. So we're reviewing that military credit and working with faculty to build those article options on our campus. So, with me, I oversee two staff members. We have one here in our center and one at Whiteman Air Force Base. We are a partner school on the installation. I also oversee compliance, so I make sure all of our MOUs are good to go on Whiteman Air Force Base. VA compliance is an animal of its own, so making sure that our university is a campus where we're good with compliance. I also educate our campus. I think that's been a really big role of mine. We host a Green Zone training on our campus. We had one right before our fall semester started, which provides skills and resources to faculty and staff members to better serve our military-affiliated population on our campus. It's about a 3 to 4 hour training. In our last training, we had 65 staff and faculty members who attended, which is really amazing. Our campus has great support and buy in. We also train departments individually. So that's kind of my role. I'll go in, and I'll schedule training with our student accounts office, go over VA educational benefits, and we'll alter that training that's applicable to them and how it can help their office, how we could partner with them. So we have a lot of campus-built relationships that I work with and our community based relationships. So, I serve as a liaison with the base and also for military organizations within our community. Or, you know, in Kansas City, we're 45 minutes from Kansas City. So basically anything that our students need, we're here to support them. And then I always tell our staff, get out and talk to the students. That's important. I don't think we need to be behind closed doors all day. We usually will eat lunch with them or host potlucks. They just did a fantasy league last week, so that was a big deal in our center. Our staff are very engaged with our students. We care, we listen. And I think that's what makes a successful center is knowing what the current needs are.

Monica Sziron 9:17
That kind of speaks to every campus, which has its own military-affiliated culture and how they interact with its students. What is it like for you being in central Missouri? How does that differ from, say, a campus on the East or West Coast? What do you do to make that really targeted for your students?

Courtney Swoboda 9:39
So we sit down with our students, we participate in the VA work study program. So we try and have a very diverse VA work study program for the students that participate in that. We listen to our students. Some good examples are we had some disabled veterans on our campus, so we purchased a golf cart. So now we partner with admissions, and we host veteran-led tours so they can get an individualized experience. And we have a golf cart. We will also take our disabled veterans to their car and take them when they need to be on campus. So that's been nice. We've also had students that wish, hey, I wish I had a popcorn machine in the center. We got a popcorn machine. I wish we had better furniture. We got better furniture. We have laptops. Students can check out textbooks. We have a book library where they can check them out for free if we have them. We've brought in Casey Vet Center counselor. So she's here every Friday. And we have a partnership with the Missouri Veterans Commission, and we have a VSO, a veterans service officer who is in our center once a month. So those are just some examples of us listening to our students to meet the needs of our current base. So those are all things that students told us that they needed. And we got.

Monica Sziron 10:46
Nice, nice.

Andy Hibel 10:48
What's your advice for others aspiring to take on a similar leadership role in higher education?

Courtney Swoboda 10:53
My advice is that I always feel like I hear from my peers that they don't have a lot of money and don't have a lot of staff. Get in front of your leadership and educate them on what you do. Training on your campus does not cost any money. That is one thing that I can say that we have done well on our campus is providing those trainings to campuses and partnering with faculty in departments. That has opened my eyes to better educate my students when they come to see me about what programs we offer, what other resources on our campus we offer. There are things that I didn't even know that we had that we could have been using just because I had reached out and we scheduled a meeting and got an hour out of all these different things. And then it spiraled into all these different ideas and things. We could provide more support for our students and possible grant and funding opportunities. So doing outreach. I know we're all busy and they kind of jam-pack our positions, but if you really are there to support your students, which is what these centers are built for, doing that outreach is extremely important. And that's what has made our center very successful.

Monica Sziron 11:54
That's awesome. And speaking to your military experience a little bit more, what advice would you have for any transitioning service member considering higher education as a career field? You know where to start. If you could go back in time, you know, what advice would you give yourself?

Courtney Swoboda 12:10
The first person I would contact is the military representative on your campus because usually, they're kind of a one-stop shop in themself. They usually know people on campus. They know how to help you apply financials, questions if they can answer it, they are going to point you in the right direction and if you aren't getting help from there, find somebody on campus or, you know, in my opinion, if you can't get help in that area, who's going help you process benefits That may not be the school for you. Do your own research, figure out if the program is going to work, maximize your credit, make sure the school can take as much credit as they possibly can. Make sure they're there reviewing your military transcripts and helping you get that stuff articulated for credit. That would be my advice. I know it can be overwhelming, but don't let it be. Just take that step and reach out and ask those military representatives on campuses.

Andy Hibel 12:59
We saw your LinkedIn post about the Missouri governor signing Senate Bill 912, which includes educational assistance for Missouri National Guard members and tuition and fee waivers. How will this measure and related programs help you and your colleagues across the state?

Courtney Swoboda 13:15
So, another great example of MOVES is on our campus. I have a great relationship with our government relations director. His name is David Pearce, and we work hand in hand. Anything that's military-related that comes down in the legislature, he's always asking me, have you read this? Is there anything we need to be addressing or any concerns? So I was made aware of a measure, and I sent it to our MOVES listserv, and then I called for all of us to have a quick meeting where we came up with a two-page list of questions, and we sent it to the bill's sponsor. And I think they were kind of shocked because I don't think they realized that all of us were talking. And so they weren't even thinking about some of the questions or concerns that were going on with this bill. So I'm happy to share that multiple schools helped form this bill, in my opinion, and we wanted to know what was going to come about and, you know, understand the higher ed, the school side in Missouri because it was going to have an impact on the schools. And we just wanted to be transparent. We played a vital role in shaping this bill. I feel like, again, we're an informal group, so they could have taken it or left it. But I'm very thankful for our government relations person on our campus, David, because he helped guide us on how to get, information and who to contact and bring awareness to other campuses about this bill.

Andy Hibel 14:31
That's wonderful. And for some of your peers who might be listening when folks ask us about things, well, how can we be more inclusive of veterans and military-connected folks on campus? There are two wonderful shining examples of what an open dialogue with your government relations person about how to truly address what he or she is seeing coming across the state legislatures, and also the idea that there's a statewide organization which you played a large role in founding, where you can start talking to your peers across the state. Institutions looking to really connect with veterans, really are able to make a difference when they're looking and trying to be proactive to building that community for them. So, kudos to you. It sounds absolutely 100% that you were extremely worthy of the recognition from your peers for the 2024 Spotlight award. And seeing those details in action just kind of makes me thrilled that we were able to honor you that way.

Courtney Swoboda 15:31
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And I'm so thankful for my peers. You know, I do feel like I need to give them a shout out. I know I've talked about Raylene at Missouri State University. She's a great friend of mine, Keith Glindemann, he did a lot of work for Senate Bill 912. He's with the University of Missouri, Columbia, and he did a lot of work with Senate Bill 912 with his campus, too. So, it's just building those relationships and friendships can help a state be more military-friendly overall. So, I'm very excited to see what happens with MOVES. And thank you guys so much. I really do appreciate the recognition and my peers who nominated me. So, thank you guys so much.

Monica Sziron 16:08
Thanks, Courtney. We're so glad that you're here. So last question. If you had a magic wand or a crystal ball, what would you like to see happen for the military-connected and affiliated space in the next five years, whether that's just in Missouri or nationwide? What would you love to see?

Courtney Swoboda 16:26
That's a tough question for me. I think it's more transparency when it comes to VA changes. I think the VA has made a lot of steps to, again, be more transparent for individuals. In my role when there are changes in processing, at the end of the day, the students don't understand that process. They just see us and they think we're the ones that are causing these issues. So that does cause a lot of issues at the school level. The amount of work that goes into this is unreal, having schools be more supportive in that area because if there are more positions, that means that these students are getting better help, which means that maybe they're more likely to stay in college and be more successful. So I guess that would be my hope for the next five years is transparency and building awareness for campuses on what these positions do.

Monica Sziron 17:19
I love that. I mean, because that ultimately benefits the campus, right? Retention, recruitment. It's just a good cycle, right?

Courtney Swoboda 17:25
Yeah. Yes, absolutely.

Andy Hibel 17:27
I don't know what we can do to help out with the VA, but and the second item with institutions, I can say that the whole experience that's been HigherEdMilitary for myself and my co-founders at HigherEdJobs, the part that's been eye-opening is how dedicated, hard-working and spread-thin professionals in this area are. And I would encourage anybody who has the ability to be an advocate on campus for additional funding for these programs, not only is it the right thing to do for your institutions and serving this community, it's just the right thing to do. These are wonderful students, and wonderful members of the community. Hopefully, you can also recruit them to stay on as professionals and faculty in your community because they do make a difference and they are committed from a mission perspective to what we do in academia. So, as much as we can underscore that latter point, this is an area that screams out for additional funding because I really do think it makes a difference on campus, not just for military-connected folks, but the campus in general.

Courtney Swoboda 18:34
Yeah, I agree for sure. I think that, you know, I think I try and take that role on our campus to bring that awareness, and it's working. It is. I think people didn't realize the things that we were doing in our center. And it's definitely helped. So I know it's a lot more work. I'm not going to sit here and tell you it's not a lot of work, MOVES is a lot of work. I pour my heart and soul into what I do, and it's because I'm passionate, but it'll pay off. So, for the schools that want to start something like what we've done, if you're in Missouri, reach out. I'm happy to help, and you can join MOVES. But if you're in another state, I'm happy to share how we got started.

Andy Hibel 19:06
So if we're just keeping score here, it's not only your role within the institution and your role statewide, but if people have forgotten from the beginning of the podcast, you're also a current reservist. You're also that. So that's a lot of hats to wear. And we thank you for being with us and sharing so much about the wonderful things that you do.

Monica Sziron 19:27
Yeah, Thank you so much for your time. And keep on keeping on.

Courtney Swoboda 19:31
Thank you, guys.

Andy Hibel 19:32
And, we thank you for listening. If you have any questions or any thoughts you want to share with us, please feel free to email us at podcast@HigherEdJobs.com or send us a direct message on X @HigherEdCareers. Thank you for listening and we look forward to talking soon.