After serving seven years in the Air Force, coming to USC was a strange experience for Danielle Goodreau.
Goodreau flew air medical evacuation as part of a five-man team. If a member of the service was injured in an IED blast, assault, ambush or other interest, she and her teammates would make the 12-hour journey from Germany to Afghanistan to pick them up and bring them surgery.
She was responsible for a lot of nursing care, and Goodreau said it “gave [her] a sense of what [she] could do and what [she] was capable of.” Now, she's returning to school for a second degree in biology, in hopes of eventually going to medical school.
More than 1,000 veterans like Goodreau at USC often come after serving overseas, sometimes after several different tours. Usually, they come to the university at a different point in their lives than most students.
That's why she has become heavily involved in the Student Veterans Association and wants to raise awareness of the organization, which is comprised of both veterans and nonmilitary students who want to show their support.
“[As a veteran] you don’t really have a lot of connections. You sometimes don’t know where you may fit in,” Goodreau said. “So, we think it’s really important to let them know we’re here, number one for support and number two for more of social camaraderie.”
From her own experiences, Goodreau knows the challenges many veterans face.
“It’s very different. Not that it’s harder, but there are different challenges. You’re in one mindset for so long, and you’re used to doing something really for your entire adult life, and then you’re coming back to school and it’s a completely different way of life,” she said. “Coming here, where you have a student body of 30,000 people, you kind of get lost.”
One of the main purposes of the organization is to let veterans know that they are not alone at USC, despite the difficulties of transitioning into the civilian world. The Student Veterans Association hosts social events every month and hosts community service events for both the university and the Columbia community.
The organization hosts a reoccurring walk every spring semester to raise awareness for victims of sexual assault called Walk A Mile In Her Shoes and also recently raised money for a care package drive and sent materials to veterans’ homeless shelters and PTSD clinics. Members also sent care packages to an organization that sends them overseas.
The student body helped the organization send these care package items. The Student Veterans Association collected donations during the organization fair, as well as had students write 43 cards.
“That was our student body coming together saying we want to support our homeless veterans and we also want to support our military members overseas,” Goodreau said.
Goodreau said that seeing students come together in such ways is truly meaningful to veterans.
“A lot of people went into the military to serve their country and to protect their families and to protect the rights of the citizens in the United States. Once you have it in you, you just want to continue that. You want to continue supporting, you want to keep helping,” Goodreau said. “So, I think it’s important for the student body to support us, as well, because we do want to be integrated ... I think it’s important to support each other and to help each other.”