After years of moving from room to room, Simpson University’s Veteran Success Center finally has a place to call home. This December, the center officially opens in its new, permanent space: the Maurice & Marianne Johannessen Veteran Success Center.
The new center is attached to Simpson’s brand-new Hugh and Hazel Darling Center for Business, Technology and Engineering, but it has its own dedicated space on the right side of the building, built with student veterans in mind.
“We are very excited to be where we are today,” said Andrew Tuggle, Director of the Veteran Success Center.
A Long Road Home
The new space has been in the works since 2018, and for the Veteran Success Center team, it marks the end of a long journey. The center started out in a modular building that no longer exists, then moved to a classroom, then to a faculty office. Now, for the first time, it has a beautiful space that is fully its own, with room to welcome and support the veterans who call Simpson home.
A One-Stop Shop for Everything Veteran
The new center is designed to be a one-stop shop for student veterans. With more room than ever before, Simpson can now bring on student workers who can help veteran students as they come and go through their school day.
The space also makes it possible to bring outside partners directly onto campus:
- Shasta County Veterans Service Office: Representatives will be on campus one to four days a month, so student veterans can access county services without leaving campus.
- Our Hero’s Dreams: This veteran organization specializes in mental health services and suicide prevention education. Its members will visit campus periodically to offer mental health support to student veterans and to train professors, faculty, and staff on suicide prevention in the veteran community.
More Room to Study, Gather and Grow
The new center offers more space than the Veteran Success Center has ever had, including:
- Study rooms and quiet spaces
- A canteen stocked with a coffee machine and snacks
- A community space where student veterans can connect
The new building gives the center room to grow, something that has been difficult in the past with limited space.
“Having an expanded space is just going to open up the opportunity to serve more veterans, have more veterans in and out of the center, for them to come here and actually be served rather than having a phone call or an email thread,” Tuggle said.
Expanding What the Center Can Offer
Today, the Veteran Success Center focuses on education. The team helps student veterans with financial aid, loans, Pell Grants, Cal Grants, grades, certifications, and everything else connected to their education.
With the expansion, and with Shasta County Veterans Services and other veteran nonprofits on campus a few times a month, the center will be able to help with needs that have typically required a trip off campus. That includes mental health support, service-connected disability claims, and VA home loan programs.
Open to the Wider Veteran Community
While the center is built for Simpson students, its doors are open to veterans across Shasta County who are thinking about their next step.
“We are very open to being able to serve those people as well, to help them figure out what does it look like to go back to college, and is Simpson the right place for me?” Tuggle said.
Honoring Senator Maurice Johannessen
“One of the big things about why this center is so important, and why we are naming it the Maurice and Marianne Johannessen Veteran Success Center, is because of the impact of Senator Maurice Johannessen,” Tuggle said.
A veteran himself, Senator Johannessen championed veterans’ benefits while in office and helped secure space for many of the region’s veteran landmarks, including the veterans home, the VA clinic, the museum and the cemetery. He also first planted the idea of Simpson University being where it is today.
“He not only spread the seed of what Simpson could be, but also the fact that he has given so much to the veteran community in his story, in his life, and what he continues to do as a veteran himself,” Tuggle said. “It is really a blessing to be able to say that we are going to continue to sow that seed. We are going to continue to serve our veteran population in ways that he has continued to live his life and serve our community here.”
Visit the New Center
The Maurice & Marianne Johannessen Veteran Success Center opens this December. Student veterans and veterans in our community considering college are invited to stop by, see the new space, and learn how the team can help.
