veteran students, something it hasn’t really done until now, says Judith Baker ’91, director of transfer and graduate admissions. Nazareth is creating a new admissions website just for vets that will be both internally and externally focused, and also a comprehensive media campaign touting its strengths as a vet-friendly school. As for some of the new programs geared toward vets that Nazareth is exploring, one will kick off in the spring 2012 semester. The College, again partnering with the VOC, created an internship program exclusively for veterans, says Albert Cabral, director of the professional internship program at Nazareth, who is overseeing this new program in collaboration with the VOC’s Mitchell. Four vet students will be placed in vet-friendly local businesses and organizations that are members
of the Veterans Business Council: the VOC, Klein Steel, law firm Underberg & Kessler, LLP, and Harris-RF. The new program follows many of the same general parameters of Nazareth’s other internships, with two additional features—the internships are only offered to veterans, and the intern would have an on-site mentor, who would also be a veteran, Cabral says. Outside of this program, Nazareth offers other veteranrelated internships, like the internship Rouin is doing with the VA. Like so many Nazareth students, many military veterans hope to give back to the community upon graduation, through a service-oriented career and/or through different types of community service. Rouin hopes to turn his internship with the VA and his degree in social work into a full-time job at the VA working with veterans. “I’m very
excited about going back and helping veterans,” he says. “I’m looking forward to that, to building more relationships and making new friends.” Meanwhile, Kundle is taking her military experience, Nazareth education, and community service and putting it all together to become the best nurse she can be. “I am so close to so many professors. We get together as a Nazareth nursing group and do things together, like the March of Dimes, and different outside activities,” she says. “Nazareth wants to put out the best students it can; it makes the extra sacrifice. That’s just like the military. I have that here with my professors and my nursing mentors. What’s better than that? I don’t think I would get that anywhere else.” Jillian S. Ambroz is a freelance writer in Rochester, New York.
About the Cover
N
azareth’s recent focus on veterans has increased campus awareness of the American flag, always a potent symbol for vets. It became clear to the college community that the flag located at the south end of the Arts Center had become less
visible over the years due to encroaching foliage and shifting campus traffic patterns. This issue’s cover features the flag in its prominent new location by the Wegman Family Sculpture Garden outside the Arts Center, raised jointly by veteran James Leach, associate director in campus safety, and Candice Kundle ’12, a veteran-student who makes a practice of walking by the flag whenever she’s on campus. The new flagpole was installed by veteran Greg Cohick from TUG Excavation, a construction worker on the Integrated Center for Math and Science who donated his time and labor for the task.
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CONNECTIONS | Winter 2011-12 41