The essays in Adapt and Overcome: Essays on the Student Veteran Experience explore issues faced by veteran-students when they confront the demands of college. Written for students, faculty and staff, and university administrators, the text helps readers gain a deeper understanding of the veteran-student experience and addresses how to support these students in order to maximize their chances for success. In the essays veterans discuss their reasons for joining the military and how their military experiences contributed to their decisions to attend college, as well as things they found stressful about pursuing further education. They write about strategies that worked for them as college students and share their ideas about how colleges and universities can be more supportive. Other topics include their need to acquire completely new skill sets to succeed academically and the reluctance they often experience in asking for help. Faculty and other university staff also write about helping student veterans succeed in academia. Adapt and Overcome is for those involved in veteran success initiatives and those wishing to understand and support the veteran in their own lives. Readers enhance their abilities to help veteran-students transition from the military to college and on to enriching and successful professional lives.

Author Biography

Mary McNaughton-Cassill earned her Ph.D. in psychology through the Joint Doctoral Clinical Program at the University of California, San Diego and San Diego State University. A recognized authority on stress, Dr. McNaughton-Cassill is now a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Texas, San Antonio and a licensed psychologist in the state of Texas. Her writing has appeared in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, and Marriage and Family Review. Dr. McNaughton-Cassill's current research interests include the impact of stress and coping on physical and psychological well-being.