Pushing brains over brawn at academic boot camp for veterans at Caltech

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Set us as preferred In a boot camp that tests brains over brawn, military veterans seeking a college education convened at Caltech this summer to simulate the intensity of finals week among faculty, researchers and mentors, participating in a program that helps them assess whether they are ready to transition to academia.The Warrior-Scholar Project is a STEM intensive founded in 2012 at Yale and has served nearly 3,000 veterans, challenging them with up to 75 hours of academic work.The program has been offered at Caltech for seven years.

Participants choose between three types of programming: STEM, business fundamentals and a humanities course.The most popular is the STEM track — science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

“The idea is that by going through WSP at Caltech, they understand, ‘I have what it takes to be at one of these phenomenal institutions,’ ” said Ryan Pavel, chief executive of the nonprofit and a former Marine sergeant.“If I want to pursue something at Caltech or MIT, then there’s a pathway.”About 80% of the project’s participants complete their degree, Pavel said.

More than half are first-generation college students.“This is a population which is very worth actively recruiting because there’s specialized talent here,” Pavel said.Universities nationwide host the boot camps, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Notre Dame and USC.

The program is free for participants, funded by a host of local and national foundations, corporations and individual donors.“There’s something about the demystification of just being on campus helping them build the skills to actually excel in a STEM curriculum,” Pavel said.

“We are committed to making sure veterans understand what they are capable of, and that could very wel...