Marine Corps News Room

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/23/news/college.php

By Tamar Lewin Published: May 23, 2007

"I was pretty heavily medicated, so my memory is a little bit foggy, but he was visiting people and asking about their experiences in the war and pushing people to get an education," said Crist, 22, who grew up in Lafayette, Louisiana. "He said he'd been a marine, too, and he'd gone to college after he got out as a lance corporal, the same rank I separated at."

That hospital visit changed things for Crist and Wright: On Wright's advice, Crist enrolled in college courses in Texas, and next autumn he will transfer to Dartmouth.

Wright, 67, meanwhile, has made eight more visits to wounded veterans at Bethesda and at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington and, with the American Council on Education, started a program to provide individualized college counseling to seriously wounded veterans.

Because of advances in medical care, and the speed with which those wounded on the battlefield are treated, the survival rate for service members with serious wounds is far higher in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts than in previous wars. These circumstances have created a pool of young men and women who must remake their lives with brain injuries, amputations and other significant limitations.

Wounded or not, veterans get extensive educational benefits. But while service members on active duty have access to many educational counseling programs, such access is harder for those who have left active duty and face long recuperation, especially if they are from families where college is not a given.

Wright said news of the 2004 battle for Falluja spurred him to think about what he could do for wounded veterans.

"I worried about the injured servicemen and how much suffering there was," said Wright, who spent three years in the Marines in California, Hawaii and Japan but never saw combat. "So I decided that I'd like to go down to Bethesda and visit them and see what I could do to encourage them to go back to school."

Wright said he talked with the veterans about his own experiences.

"I'd tell them that I was a slow starter, that I didn't start college until after I served," he said. "I'd tell them that they'd already learned discipline and teamwork, and now they should be thinking about what they can accomplish if they go to school. Some said they wanted to go to college, some didn't. Some said things like, 'Because I've lost my legs, I need a place with elevators, and I don't know if the school close to my home has them.' "

Wright added: "It was very moving to talk to those seriously injured veterans. Sometimes, when I would come out of their rooms, I would want to cry."

Wright realized that to get an education, these veterans would need individualized counseling that might be hard to find once they left active duty.

So he started looking for a way to meet that need. He first went to the military, but when that proved cumbersome, he got in touch with David Ward, the president of the American Council on Education, who agreed to develop such a program. Wright helped raise $300,000, and this spring, educational counselors are working at Bethesda, Walter Reed and the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas. More than 50 veterans asked for appointments with the counselors the first week the program was open, in March, and now about 100 wounded veterans are being served.

In a way, Wright's quest has been a return to his roots. Growing up in Galena, Illinois, he joined the Marines to put off, at least for a few years, going to work in the zinc mines that employed many in his community, including his grandfather. In that time and place, college was not for everyone. None of Wright's grandparents finished high school, and Wright's father, a bartender who served in the military, attended only one semester of college.

When he left the Marines, Wright enrolled at a state university in Wisconsin, thinking that he wanted to be a high school history teacher. Instead, he obtained a doctorate degree in history and started teaching at Dartmouth, where, since 1969, he has worked his way from professor to dean of faculty to provost and, in 1998, to president.

Wright is finding his tenure somewhat more contentious. In trustee elections this spring, Stephen Smith, a petition candidate, was elected by alumni to the 18-member board over the candidates nominated by the alumni council - the fourth consecutive petition candidate to become trustee. The campaign included critiques of the general direction of the college and a warning that the new trustee would probably be helping to choose a new president. In February, Wright wrote a letter to the Dartmouth community, rebutting some of the criticisms and adding that "to paraphrase Mark Twain," reports of his retirement were premature.

He remains a rarity: a former marine with a blue-collar background heading an Ivy League university. Although Dartmouth students are far more diverse than they were when Wright arrived, with almost half receiving financial aid, the student body, he said, includes no Iraq veterans. To the few Dartmouth alumni serving overseas, Wright sends care packages of maple-sugar candy and Robert Frost poems.

Although the new program was not intended to recruit for Dartmouth, Wright is delighted at the prospect of having a few former marines on campus next fall. One applied under early-decision rules and was accepted, entirely apart from the program. One came through a counselor in the new program. And Crist wrote to Wright after their meeting, developing the relationship that led to his transfer plans.

This month, Wright invited Crist and one of the others to visit the campus, including dinner with him and his wife.

"They both want to study Arabic," he said. "They're not likely to be the regular run-around-the-bonfire freshmen. It's going to be a different culture for them, but this is a very open, egalitarian campus, and I think it will be a good for them and for Dartmouth."