When Grant Hayden became an MCA in BGSU’s Nontraditional and Military Student Services office, he set out to do more than keep the campus tutoring program running. He wanted to expand it and to build something military-connected STEM students didn’t yet have: a clear path from tutoring session to graduate school acceptance letter.

He started by growing the tutoring program itself, recruiting two additional tutors, both military dependents, to expand its capacity. Just as important, he broadened its scope. What had been a remedial tutoring program now also prepared students for the high-stakes exams that open doors to their next steps: the AFOQT, GRE, MCAT, PCAT, and PA-CAT. Alongside that, Grant began meeting one-on-one with military-connected STEM students to map out career options, plan course sequences, and connect them with undergraduate research opportunities that could double as STEM internships.

One relationship in particular defined his time as an MCA. A Marine veteran and biology student came to Grant through remedial tutoring, struggling academically. As his grades improved, so did his ambitions, and he began meeting with Grant to talk about what came next. Together, they worked through the prerequisites for physical therapy, chiropractic, and physician assistant programs, and built a course schedule that would let him graduate on time while keeping every option open. That student is now on track to graduate this semester, with plans to train as a fire paramedic and the door still open to return to graduate school down the road.

“Helping him explore his career options and succeed academically has been a very motivating experience for me,” Grant said, “and I hope to help as many military-connected students in a similar manner as possible.”

Grant credits much of his effectiveness as an MCA to something simple: knowing the system from the inside. BGSU offers strong funding for undergraduate research, but the process of finding a faculty mentor and completing the application can feel intimidating and opaque to students navigating it for the first time. Having been through it himself, Grant was able to demystify it, connecting students directly with faculty in their fields of interest and walking them through each step of the application.

For Grant, being an MCA meant more than pointing students toward resources. It meant lowering the barriers standing between them and those resources, one student, one conversation, one application at a time.

As the Military Community Advocate for Ohio State’s College of Engineering, Hannah Raterman had a clear vision from the start: give military-connected engineering students the connections, resources, and experiences that would make campus feel less like a place they passed through and more like a community they belonged to.

She built that community one event at a time, and made sure each one had staying power. “Bring the Wings! ” was a morale-boosting outing to Buffalo Wild Wings, run three times. “Snacks & Studies” turned a tutoring space in Hitchcock Hall into a welcoming spot stocked with free snacks, introducing students to resources they didn’t know existed. And themed ice skating events at the arena next to French Field House became another favorite, run twice by popular demand.

What Hannah is proudest of isn’t the events themselves, but what happened at them: students meeting each other, striking up conversations, and building the kind of relationships that turned a college full of busy engineering majors into a genuine community. She especially valued the emails asking her to bring events back, a sign that what she’d built was actually resonating with students.

Hannah’s advice for future MCAs comes from hard-won experience. Promotion, she says, is everything, and it has to be persistent: reminders at two weeks out, one week out, three days out, the day before, and the day of, all framed with enthusiasm, so students stay excited rather than worn down. She also stresses knowing your specific college. Engineering students are perpetually busy, so finding a time and location that actually works for them matters as much as the event itself. And nothing moves the needle like a motivator, in her experience, usually free food. Wings, snacks, pizza, whatever it takes to get students in the door.

Above all, Hannah’s approach came down to listening. Surveys and polls, she says, are how you learn what students actually want, and giving people what they want is what turns an event into a community.

At Youngstown State, Jacob Sullivan saw an opportunity that hadn’t yet been built: a way to recognize veterans on campus not just for their service, but for who they were becoming as students. As an MCA with the Carl A. Nunziato Veterans Resource Center and YSU’s Office of Veterans Affairs, he set out to create that recognition himself.

The result was Pete’s Platoon, a Veteran Spotlight program Jacob established to celebrate both the military accomplishments and academic pursuits of YSU’s veteran students. Selected nominees are featured in the local newsletter every other week, invited to a spotlight luncheon at semester’s end, and presented with a custom, embroidered Pete’s Platoon patch, a small but tangible token meant to carry real meaning. Alongside that project, Jacob helped produce a video package to market YSU’s Office of Veterans Affairs, and worked with the Armed Forces Student Association and a local community member to help establish a new veterans scholarship.

Jacob also made a point of showing up. He supported the annual Veterans/ROTC Alumni golf outing and picnic, 9/11 memorial activities, and student panels and Warrior Awareness Trainings throughout the year, and beyond his assigned duties, he sought out nearly every opportunity to represent YSU’s veteran community, the Office of Veterans Affairs, and the MCA program itself, in the community and on campus.

Of everything he built, Jacob is proudest of Pete’s Platoon and the custom patches he designed as its centerpiece. He wanted the award to feel unique and earned, something with a story behind it, the kind of recognition that carries a little exclusivity and grows in meaning over time. He envisions the program eventually expanding to include podcast-style interviews with local veterans. “Although I wished for more,” he said, “I am proud to have been able to try and bring exposure in a positive light to the veterans community at YSU and in the surrounding local areas as well. Thank you for adding purpose and value to my life by participating in something bigger than myself.”

As YSU’s first-ever MCA, Jacob was building without a blueprint, and he felt that most in the friction of turning ideas into action, where recommendations often had to move through layers of approval before anything could change. Looking back, his advice to future MCAs is simple: don’t take “no” as a final answer. He believes many strong ideas never make it to fruition, not because they lack merit, but because they never reach the right person, or the right support. For those who follow him, he hopes that changes, and that persistence, paired with a little more institutional backing, lets even bigger ideas take hold.

When Christopher Ogle set out to improve how Bowling Green State University tracked its military-affiliated students, he saw an opportunity to build something better from the ground up. Rather than continuing to rely on an outside platform, Christopher designed, built, and now manages an in-house system that gives BGSU more control over student data, saves the university money, and creates a more direct connection to its military community.

The work went beyond the system itself. Christopher trained BGSU’s Peer Advisor Team, undergraduate students serving on VA work-study contracts, on how to use the new tool, then wove it into their daily workflow, tracking and reporting the status of military-affiliated students as they move through their time at BGSU.

His advice to future MCAs is simple: show up and lean on the resources already around you. “People will slowly start to show up to events and meetings, and it will start to make a difference,” he said. Those small, consistent connections, he’s found, are where real impact happens.

What Christopher is proudest of isn’t the system itself, but what it represents: a stronger sense of community, and a contribution that will outlast his own time as an MCA. Along the way, he says, it helped him grow personally too.