Southern Maine Community College unveiled its new Veterans Resource Center last week – a hub for veteran students to access academic resources and foster community.

The college did have a resource center before, but it was just one room.

“What the VRC has now become, and why it’s really important, is it’s more than just a space,” said Anthony Knight, an SMCC alumni, Army veteran and Veterans Resource Center coordinator. “We’ve built a whole community around it. There’s a lot more involvement and we see a lot more traffic come through here.”

The resource center will provide a space where veteran students can have resources come to them rather than having to seek it out themselves. Some of the outside resources being brought directly to students will include Veteran Portland Center, Veterans Upward Bound and Veterans Forward, said Amy Lainoff, director of veteran and military student services at SMCC.

“We’ll have folks come in who can meet with veterans so they don’t have to go somewhere else to find those resources,” Lainoff said. “We also provide academic advising so they can get those services, and we also have opportunities for VA work studies where the VA actually pays students to work on veteran-related activities.”

Reserved parking space for veterans on the campus of Southern Maine Community College. The college just opened a resource center for all student veterans. Contributed / Southern Maine Community College

There are plenty of resources available for veterans, but navigating them and finding ones that apply to their needs can be “very overwhelming,” Knight said. Programs for educational opportunities, health care and financial support are just some of resources available to vets.

“Veterans have a lot of resources – there are a lot of different things that are out there,” Knight said. “That oversaturation can make it hard to manage because it just becomes very overwhelming.”

In addition to a conference room and computer lab, the center in the Bay Building of the college’s South Portland campus has social spaces with TVs, couches, a movie collection and video games.

“A lot of the classes you end up in as a first-year student, it’s kids coming straight from high school. It’s kind of hard to connect with them and just have friends at college,” said Aidan Desenberg, an SMCC student and Navy veteran. “It’s nice to have a space where you can connect with people with some of the same experiences, even if you aren’t in the same branch.”

That sense of belonging is key to any college student, and veterans are no different in that regard, Lainoff said.

“I definitely hear from veterans as they hop from college to college what goes on at other colleges,” she said. “It’s easy to leave a place if you’re not connected; talking to people and having resources available, this helps them stay because we’re paying attention to them and helping them the way we help other populations of students.”

And that sense of camaraderie is often what veterans miss most about the military, Knight said.

“If you ask anybody in the military what they miss, generally, they will tell you that they don’t necessarily miss the military and that life,” Knight said. “They miss the people. Having a place you can kind of bring that back into our lives when you’re going through that transition; it’s nice to be able to have a slice of the pie.”

Whether it’s outside resources or peer support, the center is better equipped to help veteran students of all backgrounds, Knight said.

“You can have a brand new veteran coming in who doesn’t really know a whole lot about school and is in the beginning stages of their transition into civilian life,” Knight said. “There might be a student here who has been out (of the military) for a while, so they’ve had more time to make that transition – all of that comes together in a way they can support one another in different areas, not just about school.”

The resources available, along with the experience of his fellow veterans, have already helped Desenberg, he said.

“You get a briefing as you get out of the military on how to use your benefits, but it’s kind of short,” Desenberg said. “You get to actually using them and you’re like, ‘Oh, I don’t actually know what I’m supposed to do.’ Everyone here is very helpful with that.”

Lainoff said she takes pride that SMCC is able to offer these resources and foster a community among veteran students. However, she believes other colleges should do more as well.

“We are the first community college to have this amount of dedicated space for veterans,” Lainoff said. “There are some four-year colleges that have good spaces, but we need to do more. Our colleges definitely need to do more for our veterans.”