As our service men and women return home, armed with the 9/11 GI Bill offering many of them a free college education, the Fort Wayne area is on the front lines in welcoming them.

Purdue University’s Military Family Research Institute has just awarded more than $1 million in grants to fund efforts that will help veterans succeed in college. A significant portion supports new programs at IPFW and Ivy Tech Community College Northeast. Efforts will include the hiring of a full-time veterans’ affairs coordinator; review and revision of policies and procedures; creation of a veteran-specific orientation program and resource library; and the use of listservs, social media and the Web to augment communication with the veterans. Seminars, training sessions and panel discussions will help faculty, staff and the community better understand the special needs of these adult students.

The Lilly Endowment funds this Purdue effort, called Operation Diploma, and many of the institute’s programs. The Military Family Research Institute, part of Purdue’s Center for Families, serves as the organizing force and catalyst encouraging communities to think about how they can support both the service members and their families.

The institute also allocates endowment funds to provide small seed grants for communities that want to help military families and service members. Some efforts are tried and true; many communities have created support groups or paired up pen pals. Others get creative: One community collected used baseball equipment – bats, balls and gloves – and shipped them to the community’s servicemen and women for distribution to Iraqi children.

In Indiana, almost all of the 4,000 troops currently serving are citizen-soldiers – members of the National Guard or reserves. Their families don’t have the same support system they would find if they were living at a military installation. This can cause them to feel even more alone.

It’s hard for others to understand what it’s like. At-home spouses often don’t have a lot of information about what their service member is doing. They hesitate sharing any troubling news, knowing it could distract their military spouses and then affect their safety. The children tend to worry about the parents who are left at home and feel responsible for them. Some have trouble sleeping. They don’t have many people with whom they can share their concerns, who will really understand. Often they don’t ask for help.

Teachers can play a significant role not only by keeping an eye out for military children who are struggling but also by proactively incorporating information into their geography, art, music and history lessons about the areas in which students’ parents are serving. Time spent on writing assignments could be used to have children write to service members. This not only will encourage the military child to share, but also may encourage the other children to be more sensitive and thoughtful.

Reintegration of citizen-soldiers back to civilian life is a challenge as well. Picture a pyramid with the children on the top and the parents on the bottom. Now, remove one parent. Everyone else will have to adjust to make up for the missing member. The structure changes. Now, imagine trying to reinsert the military parent, and you’ll understand what they face.

The Military Family Research Institute helps by offering family clinics statewide tied to the National Guard’s post-deployment reorientation. Hundreds of children have participated. A special summer camp for the children also takes place each summer at Purdue, one of the few on a college campus.

Fifty military family children come together for one week each year to have fun and share their experience with others whose parents also are within a 15-month deployment window.

More information about the Military Family Research Institute and how you can help is available at www.mfri.purdue.edu/