CSU-Pueblo's veterans program gets $1.2M
PUEBLO, Colo. — Colorado State University-Pueblo’s Veterans Upward Bound program recently was awarded a $1.2 million federal grant to continue providing educational support services for military veterans from Pueblo and El Paso counties.
The grant, supplied by the Department of Education, will allow for up to 125 military veterans annually to receive educational services through Veterans Upward Bound offices at Pueblo Community College and Pikes Peak Community College. Chris Beltran, director of CSU-Pueblo VUB program, said the university was one of only 34 programs in the country to receive the grant. “Every four or five years, we have to compete with other higher education institutions who want to serve veterans,” Beltran said Wednesday. “We have been fortunate in that we have met 100 percent of the goals and objectives outlined by the U.S.
Department of Education. We make sure that the work we do is what the feds expect of us.”
Veterans Upward Bound, which is part of the Department of Education’s TRIO programs, focuses on first-generation, low-income students who served in the military and were honorably discharged by providing veterans with academic support to pursue a higher education.
Among the primary services provided by VUB are refresher courses in English, math, science, career planning, computer literacy and Spanish.
“VUB works to get the veterans academically ready and to provide the moral support to give them the confidence to enroll in higher education and take advantage of their (educational) benefits,” Beltran said.
The pre-collegiate services are offered at PCC and PPCC with the hope that when the students are ready, they will enroll at CSU-Pueblo, Beltran said.
