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NEW RANKS, NEW ROLES

Veterans find purpose at WVU in a different kind of boot camp

By West Virginia University

November 9^th, 2025

Most students come to West Virginia University straight from another academic institution, whether it’s a high school or another college. More than 1,000 students across our campuses, however, arrive here with knowledge acquired in more unconventional places than a classroom — ships, jets, and U.S. military bases.

With broader life experiences, these veterans and service members have perspective and maturity that distinguish them from younger students. But they can also find it hard to fit in and balance the competing demands of school, work, and family life.

Mildred Shea, James Oden, and Andrew Stover are 3 of the military-connected students who have made the successful transition from service to study. After work that has taken them around the globe, WVU has become the place where they belong.

Mildred Shea

As a speech-language pathology graduate student in the WVU School of Medicine, Mildred Shea draws upon problem-solving skills she learned in the U.S. Navy.

“Sometimes, when a problem gets very difficult, you find yourself wanting to outsource it and have someone else solve the problem,” she said. “You can’t do that when you are on a ship. Sometimes, I see others stop trying to solve a problem, but the military taught me to dig deeper; there’s always another avenue that you can try to explore and get the answer.”

Shea enlisted in the Navy during her senior year at Coe College, a small liberal arts institution in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. There, she pursued an ambitious course load in English, history, and Asian studies with plans to become a librarian. Knowing that graduate school would be expensive, however, she thought a period of military service would be beneficial.

“A lot of people in my family served in the military, and I saw that it was an opportunity to get a strong start in life,” said Shea, whose father was a U.S. Marine and whose brother served in the Navy.

She also appreciated the chance to contribute to society, as she saw her parents doing throughout their careers. Shea grew up in Fulton, Missouri, where her father worked as a police officer and her mother was a teacher.

Following college graduation, Shea headed to Navy boot camp in Great Lakes, Illinois. Amid much instruction, she recalls experiencing “a lot of hurry up and wait, in that iconic military saying.”

In boot camp, she also met her husband for the first time, although they wouldn’t begin dating until later.

Meanwhile, Shea trained as an electronics technician, learning to fix radios and navigation equipment, including radar and computers that operate a ship’s helm. It was a big change from her liberal arts studies in college, but she enjoyed the challenge.

“It’s good to know that you can learn things that you didn’t think you could learn,” she said.

Shea served her first 4 years on the USS Normandy, a guided-missile cruiser based in Norfolk, Virginia.

The opportunity to circumnavigate the globe was a highlight of her service and a major reason she chose the Navy over other military branches. The Normandy took her to Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Belgium, Greece, Spain, and Iceland, among other countries. She went through the Panama Canal, crossed the Equator, and entered the Arctic Circle.

Female sailors were vastly outnumbered on the Normandy, with enlisted women making up about 30 of the 500 personnel on board. For a long time, Shea was the only woman in her division, but positive experiences outweighed examples of discrimination.

“Whatever bad moments I had, there were guys in my division who more than compensated by coming to my defense,” she said.

Though she enjoyed her work as an electronics technician, Shea knew it wasn’t what she wanted to spend her life doing.

“The guys around me loved when things broke so they could fix them,” she said. “I would go on shift and think, ‘I really hope nothing breaks.’”

Mildred Shea, a graduate student in speech-language pathology.

Following her shipboard service, Shea spent 2 years at a command called NCTAMS — Naval Computer and Telecommunications Area Master Station — a hub on land that manages communication for ships at sea.

Then, Shea was ready to separate from Naval service and happy to rejoin civilian life. Becoming a librarian no longer appealed to her, but she still wanted to work with children in the public school system.

“I wanted to be certified in something specific to have job security,” she said. “I picked speech pathology because it was another way to work in a public school and give back to the community.”

Shea and her husband Mark came to Morgantown so he could study at the WVU School of Medicine. In the Navy, he served as a special operations combat medic, and WVU offers support for veterans with special operations experience who are transitioning to medical careers.

Since coming to Morgantown in 2022, the family has grown to love West Virginia and the University. Raising 2 children, aged 3 and 6, while pursuing graduate study keeps them busy. Veterans within the School of Medicine have built a strong community, pitching in to help one another with childcare, moving, and other needs that emerge for veterans living far from family support.

She especially credits Dr. Alison Wilson, professor in the Department of Surgery and executive director of the WVU Critical Care and Trauma Institute, for bringing student veterans together.

When asked if she would like her children to pursue military service someday, Shea hesitates briefly.

“I’d like to think if they wanted to, I would be good with it, but I also know it’s hard and you miss a lot of things.”

She believes, however, that her Naval experience will serve her well as a speech pathologist, which requires interdisciplinary work with other professionals and the ability to serve clients from varied backgrounds.

“Ship life is very team-oriented,” she said. “You learn that everyone is very important regardless of what they do.”

James Oden

Growing up in Daphne, Alabama, across the bay from Mobile, James Oden saw the benefits of U.S. Army service all around him.

“I come from an Army family,” he said. “My older brothers were Army, my dad was Army, my mom was Army.”

And, though he was 900 miles from Morgantown, he got his first glimpse of WVU when Daphne football hero Pat White became a Mountaineer in 2004.

The road that would lead Oden himself to Morgantown was a long one, stretching through Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Zambia, among other places. That journey began in 2010, when he joined the Army following high school graduation.

Oden deployed to Afghanistan after completing basic training. His role as a calvary scout involved conducting reconnaissance and gaining intelligence to guide tactical decision-making.

That was a perfect fit.

“I loved my job,” he said. “It’s what I joined to do, and I got to do it immediately in Afghanistan. And I loved that as I ranked up, I got to train others to do it as well.”

Another deployment took him to Zambia, where the U.S. Army trains local soldiers to support United Nations peacekeeping missions.

In 2016, he deployed to Ukraine.

“That’s when they weren’t calling it a war yet, but it was a war,” he said. “We were training Ukrainians coming off the front line, and then they went back to the front line.”

Travel was a highlight of Oden’s military service.

“I got to go to Africa, I got to go to Europe, I got to go to the Middle East. I loved going to different places. I met locals in each country and learned about their different cultures.”

Seeing the struggles that people in other countries face, and how they overcome adversity, gave him perspective about the privileges Americans have.

He struggled to name anything he disliked about his active duty service, besides “normal work stuff” like annoyance with bosses and unpleasant work hours.

“Nobody likes waking up at 4:30 a.m.,” he noted.

Upon joining, Oden planned to serve 20 years and achieve the rank of sergeant major, the highest enlisted position in the U.S. Army. Only a growing family and the desire to spend more time with them convinced him to transition from active duty to the reserves.

Oden met his wife Tiffany on a trip back to his home state, where she was attending the University of Alabama. When they married, he was still on active duty, but when their second child was on the way, she longed to return to her hometown in Washington County, Pennsylvania.

Once settled there, Oden considered 2 college options that were each about an hour’s drive away. Why did he choose WVU?

“Besides the fact that I hate Pitt?” he asked with a smile.

Political science senior James Oden poses in Woodburn Hall.

Oden’s early experiences following Pat White’s career gave him a positive impression of WVU, where he is now a senior in political science. Transitioning to college, he faced the challenges that any non-traditional student does among younger classmates with varying amounts of academic commitment.

“You are around a whole new group of people that you don’t have that much in common with, besides the fact that you’re all trying to learn something,” he said. “At least, some people are.”

Oden believes his military experience prepared him well for success in college.

“The easy answer is discipline,” he said. “I’ve gone through many military trainings and courses and developed a way I can learn things quickly.”

He appreciates the support WVU provides for student service members and veterans through its Center for Veteran, Military and Family Programs staff.

“They are proactive in trying to find veterans on campus so that they can help them, he said. “They don’t just sit back and let veterans try to find them.”

As a commuter student, and the father of 3 young daughters, Oden does not have much time for extracurricular activities, but he does spend some time hanging out in the Mountaineer Bunker, a hub in the Mountainlair for veterans and service members.

Coaching and volunteering are also helping to prepare Oden for a career in service to others. After earning his bachelor's degree, he plans to get a master’s in non-profit management.

To other veterans transitioning to higher education, he advises; “Embrace it. It is not the same as what you are leaving behind because you have to find your own purpose. The military gives us a purpose; we know what we are going to do every day and why we are doing it.

“In college, it’s on you to decide why you want to do something. Take time to test out majors and really test the waters on all the options available to you.”

ANDREW STOVER

Andrew Stover started life in West Virginia, but growing up in a military family brought frequent moves before his eventual return to the Mountain State.

“I’ve lived all over the place. I tell people that I grew up in South Carolina and Ohio, but now I’ve lived in West Virginia longer than anywhere else,” said Stover, who joined the U.S. Air Force after graduating from high school in 2016 and is now a technical sergeant.

Enlisting was an easy decision for Stover because his father also served in the Air Force, as part of the flight crew on C-130 aircraft.

“I grew up always being around airplanes, being around the military, and just followed in my dad’s footsteps,” he said. “It’s all I’ve ever known.”

His initial goal was the job he has now as boom operator on the KC-135 Stratotanker, which provides in-flight refueling for other airplanes.

It took a while to fulfill that dream because Stover was first assigned to the Air Force’s POL — petroleum, oil and lubricants management — career field, where his work involved driving a fuel truck.

After basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, and service at Shepherd Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas, Stover spent almost 5 years based in Martinsburg with West Virginia Air National Guard. More recently, he transferred to the Pennsylvania Air National Guard in Pittsburgh, where he was able to earn his wings and achieve his goal of being a boom operator.

Taking on that dream role required more training, including a brief return to San Antonio; survival school in Spokane, Washington; and time at “Altus Air Force Base in the middle of nowhere Oklahoma” to learn how to fly the KC-135.

Throughout his service, he has enjoyed the chance to do humanitarian work, including responding to hurricanes and other disasters with the West Virginia Guard.

“Since becoming a boom operator, I’m a little more directly involved in the mission,” Stover said. “I’ve deployed a couple of times to the Middle East, where I can really see that I’m doing something related directly to the War on Terror.”

Traveling has been both a privilege and a burden of Air Force life.

“I’m on the road all the time,” he said. “I’ve missed a few Thanksgivings, a few Christmases now.”

Leaving home has become harder emotionally since Stover and his wife Emily became parents of a baby girl about 18 months ago.

Still he appreciates the varied experiences he’s had, including time spent in Hawaii and all over Europe, the Middle East, and the Caribbean.

History and multidisciplinary studies student Andrew Stover poses outside Chitwood Hall.

Besides balancing military service and family life, Stover is also pursuing higher education at WVU as a junior majoring in history and multidisciplinary studies.

Starting college at age 26 was a big decision for him, but choosing where to study was easy.

“I grew up a Mountaineer fan,” said Stover, who spent his first two years of life in Charleston. “I’m a native West Virginian, my dad was a big Mountaineer fan, and I knew I wanted my diploma to say WVU.”

Choosing a major was also easy.

“I thought, let’s do something I know I’m good at. I love history; I’m really passionate about it. I added multidisciplinary studies (MDS) because if the military is going to be paying for it through the GI Bill, I might as well get two degrees.”

The MDS major lets Stover stack political science and aerospace studies courses onto his history curriculum.

His military experience gives him much more firsthand knowledge with these course topics than the typical student has.

“I have a lot of experience with military processes and conflict and even the regions we’re talking about,” he said. “It puts things into perspective, especially when talking about the Middle East. It’s a place I’ve spent way too much time in, so I just have that background knowledge.”

A bigger challenge than his coursework was finding a sense of community on campus as a non-traditional student.

“It was hard finding someplace where I felt like I fit in, especially with people with similar experiences to my own. I definitely have that now, but for a while it was tough, being in school with kids that are 17 or 18 years old. Meanwhile, I have a wife, and I have a daughter who was born right after I started school.”

The Mountaineer Bunker, a hub for student veterans and service members in the Mountainlair, provides a sense of belonging.

“It’s a place to be with these people who have similar experience and mindsets, away from the busyness of the school,” he said. “The staff there has been great.”

Helping other students from military backgrounds find community is Stover’s goal as president of the WVU Veterans and Servicemembers Club. He is trying to forge connections with other organizations on campus, including the Veterans Military Advocacy Group at the College of Law; a group of special operations veterans in the School of Medicine; and campus ROTC programs.

He urges veterans who are new to campus to get involved.

“Definitely reach out to the Bunker, and reach out to the Veterans and Serrvicemembers Club. That community has been huge for me and some of my buddies that are in it as well.”

Outside college, Stover is also pursuing flight school, with the goal of flying for a commercial airline someday.

He is not sure how much longer he will stay in the Air Force, but he has at least three more years to serve and will probably re-enlist after that.

“Originally I wanted to do my 20 years, but things have changed a lot,” he said. “I love what I do. I have the coolest job in the world. I just don’t know if it’s super good for my family, so it’s kind of a day-to-day thing.”