Warrior-Scholar Project in North Carolina
In summer 2022, veterans and current military students participated in the Warrior-Scholar Project at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-Chapel Hill). Warrior-Scholar Project (WSP) is a nonprofit organization that equips service members and veterans for success in higher education.
According to the Warrior-Scholar Project website, they “host intensive, one- and two-week college-preparatory academic boot camps in three disciplines: Humanities, STEM, and Business & Entrepreneurship.” WSP has partnered with 21 different four-year institutions to host their academic boot camps. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill exclusively taught humanity courses to participants for one week.
The UNC-Chapel Hill campus was a beautiful place to live and learn. Participants were allowed to dorm with other WSP students, providing an opportunity to make friends, and food was provided for free at the Chase Dining Hall.
Monday was the initial start of unit one, where WSP students were assigned readings to complete by the end of Sunday. WSP students were also given an essay about democracy that they needed to complete by Friday. Each day, there was a new instructor to lecture students on different topics that were related to history and American government. During the day, WSP students were given designated hours to work with writing instructors and tutors to receive help for their essays.
Dr. Hilary Edwards Lithgow was the writing instructor at WSP University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has taught WSP for several years. Dr. Lithgow enjoys helping out military and veteran students through the WSP program. She recalled a WSP student that wrote an essay draft that reflected most of the WSP students’ work ethic towards education. Dr. Lithgow said, “As he [the student] explained when he handed in the paper, he sought the strongest and most thorough possible criticism of his work in order to be able to learn and improve as much as he possibly could during the time we had. He wanted to make the most of every minute and sentence.” In Dr. Lithgow’s mind, military and veteran students that participated in her WSP boot camp are hard working and make all of their time in the classroom productive
Working side by side with Dr. Lithgow was a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Ph.D. candidate named Erik Maloney. On his experience working with WSP students, Dr. Maloney said, “A WSP classroom is not just teachers and students, but a team working together, dedicating their highest and most earnest efforts to understanding ideas that matter, listening attentively and reading well, carving out their places in debates of the deepest significance to humans and to the history of democracy.”
The boot camp ended with a course reception. Participants who had successfully passed the academic boot camp were awarded a WSP pin by their fellows. Instructors were present to celebrate the accomplishment of their participants.
