A team from the local Department of Veterans Affairs visited Ecotech Institute last month to train faculty members on the long-term effects of post-traumatic stress disorder in students.
According to Phil Meyers, a program director and professor at the trade school on East Mississippi Avenue and Interstate 225, the two-hour training session came as a result of requests from faculty members. Ecotech, a trade school focused entirely on renewable energy, sustainable design and “green” technology that opened in its present location in 2011, has seen an influx of military veterans in its brief history, Meyers said. While faculty members aren’t qualified to treat PTSD in their students, they wanted to gain a deeper understanding of the condition and its everyday effects.
“What we wanted was some training to make it easier for our faculty and staff to understand some of the issues that military and civilians have … so that we could be more sensitive. We wanted (to) have ways of helping them succeed in their academic environment.”
The training included basic information about PTSD as it relates to military service, Meyers said. The two-hour training included lectures, question-and-answer sessions and videos of a military unit serving in Afghanistan.
“They tried to make it as realistic as possible,” said Meyers, a Vietnam veteran. “(We saw) fairly raw footage of what the combatants were subjected to. The idea of this seemed to be to try to give people who’ve never been in a war situation a little better idea of what people in a war are subjected to.”
That kind of background information could help faculty members recognize PTSD triggers in a classroom and give them tools to help students, Meyers said.
“For example, if a classroom gets really excited about a topic and lots of people are talking at the same time, some people find that very difficult to tolerate,” Meyers said. “I tell students it’s perfectly OK to get up and leave the classroom. Take a lap around the campus and let yourself calm down.”