AURORA | When former Army Staff Sgt. Mike Petschel walked across the stage at the University of Colorado Denver’s commencement ceremony to receive his Master’s in Business Administration on Dec. 15 at the Colorado Convention Center, he was hardly alone.
The 12-year veteran who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Joint Guardian, had plenty of friends and classmates in the crowd that day, but it was his larger support system that Petschel was proud to carry with him across the stage.
Petschel started the “Boots to Suits” program at the University of Colorado Denver to align veteran students with executive-level mentors who could help them transition from school into the workforce, and sitting in the audience was Petschel’s own mentor, Jan Rutherford.
“I’m just really proud of him,” Rutherford said. “As the founder of ‘Boots to Suits’ he was trying to get mentors with veterans, but he didn’t have a mentor. We met a number of times and he finally said, ‘Hey, will you be my mentor?’
“It was an honor and privilege,” he added.
Rutherford, who has a son in the military, knows the value firsthand of helping veterans find work after school — he’s a veteran too.
“There’s nothing that replaces one-on-one coaching. There are a lot of executives that really don’t want to devote time unless it’s ‘one to many,’ and Mike helped them understand that this isn’t something you can throw money at. There’s no shortcut, you have to invest time with people,” he said.
According to the Department of Labor, over the next five years an anticipated 1.5 million service members will leave the military looking to enter the workforce. Some of those veterans will enter schools and training first, like Petschel did, while some will not.
Petschel said that getting veterans to school is a relatively easy process; getting them out of school and into jobs is different altogether.
“Originally the idea (for Boots to Suits) was very local: Help CU students transition out from college and university into the workplace,” he said. “There are a lot of programs out there to help them transition into academia, but nothing really that helps them out of it. So they get out of the military, jump into academia — it’s a structured environment once again — and once their four years are up and they graduate, they’re thrown out into the world, alone and don’t know what to do. It’s a daunting thing.”
The numbers would suggest that he’s right too.
According to the Department of Labor, the unemployment rate in November for veterans who have served in active duty anytime after 2001 is 10 percent. The number for non-veterans is 7.2 percent.
The Boots to Suits page on the UCD website enumerates reasons to hire veterans and includes a list of current tax incentives offered by governments to hire more veterans. But Petschel said ensuring success goes beyond enticing employers to hire veterans, it’s also incumbent on the veterans to prepare themselves for the new workforce.
“We want to get to these guys before they graduated, help them out by introducing them and getting mentors who would show them the ropes of what it takes to get ahead in the civilian workforce and really teach them … how organizations work,” he said. “Military people are very good with systems. That was the idea. Get them executive-level mentors who can show them the entire organization, they can see what the needs are at all levels of the organization … and hopefully they can develop a friendship that transcends the Boots to Suits program, and continues on for life.”
For Petschel, who graduated with a Master’s in Business Administration, the future of the program he started is largely in the hands of others, by design.
He said the program recently hired a full-time staffer to administer the program and that he’ll serve as an advisor for the near future. He’d also like to recreate the program at other universities nationwide to create a national support system for veterans exiting school, but he won’t be as fully involved as he was while he was in school.
“I never wanted to create a program that I’d keep. I wanted to start it, step away and let another veteran come in and step into a leadership role and take it over. That’s the idea,” he said. “We’re providing veterans with opportunities, instead of just more benefits. There are plenty of benefits out there, but what we really need are opportunities. So that’s what we’re trying to create at all levels.”
Rutherford said the need for programs like Boots to Suits was necessary for all veterans coming back.
“These guys have a hard road and anything we can do to help them is a good idea,” he said.
For more information about the
program, go to tinyurl.com/d3lerd8
Is it not wonderful that we have “affordable” public universities that our great veterans can come home to and get an outstanding education. Sad to say that there is an element in our state only interested in destroying our public institutions leaving no option for anyone but the rich to achieve a great education.