I participated in two recent watershed cultural and transformational moments. Both instances occurred at university-centered conferences, not always the contexts of epiphany and emotional social change — but indeed, that is where they occurred. I’m now filled with hope that universities can collectively join forces with public schools to support military-connected and veteran students.

The first transformational moment occurred when I walked into a massive auditorium at the American Educational Research Association convention. I was literally floored to see it filled with over 3,000, mostly civilian university professors and researchers. They gave a standing ovation and welcomed second lady, Dr. Jill Biden, who came to share her vision on how university schools of education could support military-connected and veteran students in public schools.

For about an hour I watched them listen intently to a direct plea from Dr. Jill Biden to include military and veteran-connected students in their teaching and research. Dr. Biden was articulate, passionate, impressive and convincing in her talk. She clearly raised awareness and swayed many minds. Indeed, on that day, I was awestruck by the very large number of professors and researchers who came to learn about military-connected and veteran students, their thoughtful questions about ways to become involved, and their subsequent willingness to raise more awareness within their universities. I did not expect this audience to care this much. And they did. I did not think the audience would respond so positively to the message. They did. I thought they would need more convincing. I was clearly wrong.

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