���app

���app added two more veteran-related programs last year, thanks to donations from the Sturm Family Foundation. At ���app’s Sturm College of Law, the����provides legal advice and services to assist with the myriad legal issues many veterans face. And the University’s����(GSPP) has launched a new mental health clinic for current military members, veterans and their families, as well as the��, an education track that will help create more knowledgeable and skilled mental health care providers for veterans.

Donald Sturm, founder of the Sturm Family Foundation, says there are countless stories of traditional service providers who aren’t meeting the needs of military veterans and active members with serious physical, mental and legal needs. “Our family was interested in helping these individuals, their families and the ���app’s faculty and students by providing necessary and beneficial services to veterans,” Sturm says.

The law school’s Veterans Advocacy Project, which also received funding from the Colorado Bar Foundation, allows ���app law students to work with attorneys to help veterans with their legal needs, including disability compensation claims and discharge upgrades, at no charge (23 percent of veterans receive an “other than honorable discharge”��that can limit health, pension and education benefits).

Director Ann Vessels says the program has 41 active cases (two cases have been resolved, netting clients nearly $675,000) and is giving students invaluable experience in a growing legal niche.

“We’re enormously proud of the work we have been able to do to date and look forward to helping many more veterans,” Vessels says.

At GSPP, the��Sturm Center��tailors mental health services specifically to military needs, at the same time giving students hands-on experience working with a military population. The Sturm Specialty in Military Psychology education track — which starts in September — will train students to assist veterans with their mental health care. Katy Barrs, director of the Sturm Center, says the curriculum will include courses on military culture and families, readjustment, treatment, post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, reintegration into the community and community resources.

“I look forward to contributing to future generations of psychologists who will be better prepared and trained to assist the men and women who have served our country,” Barrs says.

As for Oakley’s future, he plans to get his real estate license and build a residential real estate business.

“We don’t want to be pitied; we just don’t want to be forgotten,” Oakley says of himself and his fellow vets.��“As the wars end, and God willing, the world becomes more peaceful, the struggles of some veterans are still real and ongoing.”