Drawing upon a two-year study of student-veterans in college writing classrooms, this article analyzes three types of courses developed in an effort to respond to increased military-affiliated student enrollments: veterans-only, veteran-focused, and veteran-friendly. The article concludes with recommendations for an asset-based approach to professional development for writing faculty

Suggesting that higher education is at a pivotal time regarding the influx of veteran students on campus, this and the following essays argue that faculty have an ethical obligation to investigate and, if appropriate, respond to the veteran student demographic enrolled in two- and four-year institutions. We hope to encourage language, literature, and writing faculty to rethink their preconceptions of war, warriors, and military culture—to ask hard questions about what we know about the wars, the people who fight them, their families, and the public narratives that have controlled our access to “combat operations.” We encourage faculty to engage the complexities of war, to honor the complicated questions and dilemmas military members face, and to understand how those questions will likely filter into classrooms, social interactions, and broader national discourse. We provide our colleagues with an opportunity to hear veteran voices in the hope that classroom teachers can have some grounds on which to reconsider and engage with the culture of war. We have an opportunity to theorize classroom practices that are in clear contact with veteran experiences and, more important, an opportunity to engage with veterans and service members not simply as objects of study but as colleagues.

Women who work in highly male-dominated fields such as science and the military often find it difficult to establish a place for themselves within their workplace communities. In this essay, I examine how two related online communities for military women enable participants to overcome their workplace isolation, form a collective consciousness, find positive mentorship, and develop a community literacy that affords them a voice through which to enact both personal and public change.