MU Veterans Center. BROOKE DELLAROCCO / THE QUADRANGLE
Brooke Della Rocco, News Editor
Manhattan University was recognized by Military Friendly® Schools with gold status for the 2025-2026 academic year. This is the 11th consecutive year the university has been awarded with the highly-regarded status.
Higher education institutions are scored through a survey that is offered free of charge at about 8,800 schools nationwide. The ranking is divided into a top 10 list, with gold, silver and bronze statuses being awarded to schools in each category. Institutions are judged upon a number of criteria including military student support and retention, financial aid and loan repayment, culture and commitment, admissions and orientation, academic policies and compliance and graduation and career outcomes.
Student-veteran success at MU is led by David Bollert, Ph.D., director of the Veterans Success Center, and Helene Quezada, assistant director of military and veteran recruiting. Together, they focus on how to consistently provide support and promote success for veterans, in an all-around effort to make the university more military-friendly.
“A lot of them [student-veterans] are transitioning from being active-duty to veteran status,” Quezada said. “They need the support and that starts with the initial contact, reaching out to the school, me supporting them through that application and admissions process. It can be something as simple as obtaining a high school transcript.”
While this is not the first year MU has participated in the survey, Military Friendly® Schools assures that as years go by, it is more difficult to maintain top status as schools are scored, “via improved methodology, criteria and weightings developed with the assistance of an independent research firm and our Advisory Council.”
Many prospective student-veterans look to Military Friendly® Schools’ website in order to determine the best plan of action for them to have a seamless transition out of duty. By achieving this status, MU becomes more appealing to incoming student-veterans, as it is weighed objectively against its competitors.
Bollert went on to describe what sets Manhattan University apart from those other competitor institutions.
“I think our ace is community,” Bollert said. “It’s the formation of and hopefully the improvement of the community. We try to do a number of things to bring this about and maintain it…Community needs to be maintained. It needs to be worked on. The Veterans Success Center is a key component of that. It’s a home within a home for our student-veterans and our military dependents to have access to.”
Tyler Thomason, Air Force vet and a current student pursuing radiation therapy, spoke about his experience with the transition and community.
“The Veterans Success Center is great because there’s other veterans there,” Thomason said. “So when you come in and you’re new, you don’t really know anybody. It helps that you at least will run into people who were also in the military, probably a little bit older…It’s a little different than the average student, so it’s nice to be able to connect with other veterans who are also on the same page of life that you’re on.”
The center focuses on community in a multitude of ways, encouraging events among the student-veteran community, including but not limited to Open Table at An Beal Bocht, Veterans on Broadway, where students attend a Broadway show together, retreats and group counseling sessions. Veterans At Ease is another program put in place, where student-veterans are grouped into a special section of a core religion class to ensure their success among one another.
Juan Ortiz Soler, United States Marine Corps veteran and student pursuing a degree in International Studies, emphasized the impact that the Veterans Success Center has had on his experience.
“Dr. David Bollert and the Veterans Success Center team have been outstanding, consistent, and responsive,” Soler wrote in an email to The Quadrangle. “They’ve opened doors for campus involvement and career planning. They’re a one-stop shop, benefits guidance, priority registration help, referrals for academic support, a quiet study space, community events and people who actually check in.”
Quezada spoke about how the students reinforce the culture throughout the programs.
“I think our current student-vets are the biggest selling point because when they meet them [incoming students], they feel like they’re coming home,” Quezada said. “They’re well received and they’re open.”
Apart from the strong sense of community embedded throughout the process, Manhattan University also offers unlimited Yellow Ribbon tuition benefits for eligible veterans. This program provides tuition assistance and financial support for Post-9/11 veterans attending private or out-of-state institutions.
Thomason spoke about his initial search for schools and how the Yellow Ribbon Program led him to choose MU.
“I knew I had the GI bill so I was trying to find schools that were Yellow Ribbon schools,” Thomason said. “Those are schools that will let me come here tuition free, pretty much. So the school [MU] was actually one that was Yellow Ribbon but also had the program I was interested in.”
In the future, there are plans to continue adapting and expanding the events the center provides, potentially introducing a game night for the community and more opportunities in social programming.
Thomason left the conversation with a suggestion for the administration.
“If I could make one suggestion, it would be that the school would give off the day on Veterans Day,” Thomason said. “I think the school is great, but there’s always room to improve. I think that would be a nice improvement.”