Photo by Emily Goldberg
The needs of veterans are being assessed to determine what they require after their overseas tours and analyzed to see what else could be useful to them. This is all thanks to Director of Clinical Education and Associate Clinical Professor of Law Jeffrey Baker, who also serves as the Principal Investigator and Program Director for the Wood-Claeyssens Foundation.
After their tours, veterans often attend college. Universities look to have a healthy veteran population, and Pepperdine is no exception. The foundation is supporting a grant-funded research project assessing legal needs of veterans in the Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. The goal of the research is to continue to find ways to improve the benefits veterans receive, especially in the workplace, according to Baker.
Baker said he wishes to make a lot of change and progression, including more attention in the work place, using this grant. He plans to take a survey of all of the public and private companies and their work with veterans, especially underserved veterans.
Sophomore and veteran Nick Link said he thinks Pepperdine provides well for its veterans. “There’s a lot of great resources for veterans at Pepperdine,” Link said. “The student veterans group, Pepperdine’s Veteran representative, Lesbiz Tovar and Pepperdine’s yellow ribbon program are all incredibly helpful.”
Other student veterans have said Pepperdine aptly provides for its veterans, but the research study aims to improve the benefits of veterans outside the scholastic setting as well.
“We’re sending out a survey to organizations to see what they provide, who they serve and what they think are the greatest needs for veterans,” Baker said.
There are three basic goals that the grant, with the help of Baker, wishes to achieve through its surveys.
“We want to identify the needs that aren’t being well met for veterans, identify gaps in services and coordinate community responses and especially find ways Pepperdine Law students can expand their capacity with law companies,” Baker said.
In addition to these main goals, Baker has more ideas in the future for the work from the grant.
“We are expecting follow-ups for law students to go into law offices to work with legal services to work along with veterans,” Baker said.
As well as this grant helping veterans in the Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, it is also helping Pepperdine law students broaden their horizons in their field.
“We’re inviting all legal servers on campus to share their findings with the students, as well as collaborate and coordinate new information,” Baker said. A workshop will be held on Dec. 1.
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