By: Cate Scully (Loyola Senior)
Pizza, soda, Christmas ornament painting, cookie decorating, a holiday party in a safe space to decompress, is what Loyola alumna and Navy veteran Carly Fournier (28) could only dream about a few years ago, now it’s a reality.
The Military Veteran Student Services (MVSS) office hosted its first holiday party in its new space on December 13, 2023 but getting this new space for veterans on-campus was possible because of miracles and the hard work put in behind the scenes.
At the holiday party, “Home Alone” was playing on the TV with veterans watching it from the big welcoming couch. The conference room had crafts set up. Veterans were decorating cookies and ornaments. Giant pizzas were sprawled out on desks. Veterans who didn’t know each other were becoming friends and building community.
The road to this new space has been a long journey. In the spring of 2018
when Fournier started at Loyola, the veterans office was in the back corner of the Tutoring Center in the Sullivan Center. Its staff consisted of two people. The MVSS office went through three coordinators over the period of a year.
Ironically, the university named after St. Ignatius of Loyola, a veteran who went to school after leaving the military to pursue a new vocation, lacked a place for veteran students like himself to congregate and build community.
Then in the winter of 2020, a miracle happened that brought change to the MVSS office, Loyola hired Alex Pirila, a Marine Corps veteran, to become the director of MVSS.
Fournier said, “Alex’s first day on the job was at [National Convention (NatCon) of Student Veterans of America (SVA)]. I met Alex at NatCon, kind of came up with a plan to like, do better.”
The MVSS moved from a closet in the Bursar’s office to the Financial Aid office. Pirila had an office and the student veterans had a space of their own, a cubicle. Fournier and another veteran student were hired as work studies and worked from the cubicle. Fournier helped organize an SVA chapter on-campus. The chapter only consisted of ten students, but it was growing. The veteran student community was growing.
Then the COVID-19 Pandemic hit. Loyola went to remote learning. The veteran community on-campus went on hiatus. Fournier was reactivated from the Navy Reserves. The veteran community was spread out, but kept in touch via social media and text messages. Pirila sent out emails to check in on everyone and offer resources that he found for veterans who were in need of assistance.
When classes resumed on-campus in Fall 2021, there were a lot more student veterans in the cubicle. The need for a bigger space for student veterans grew. Loyola wasn’t willing to fund a lounge for veteran students, let alone provide a space for them that wasn’t a cubicle.
Fournier said, “Alex Pirila reached out to other schools that had won grants and asked about how to be successful in applying for grants.”
Fournier came back from her Naval duty energized to find a way to get a lounge funded. As a work study, she was an MVSS student coordinator for programming and initiatives.
Fournier said, “The summer of ‘22 my job working for the MVSS office over the summer was to look for grants that we can apply for more resources. So we found the Centers of Excellence for Veteran Student Success grant.”
The MVSS applied for the CEVSS grant and was rejected.
Fournier said, “One of the things was that if we got the grant, the school had to provide the physical space. So that was a really big hurdle for a really long time. And then I think they just thought we really weren’t gonna get it. We got the approval. We made the submission deadline. Then we got the email that we didn’t get the grant.”
Fournier said, ”We didn’t get the grant the first time around. And then me, Josh, Olivia, Colin spoke at the annual American Legion National Conference in a roundtable panel discussion and we met someone there from the Department of Education.”
Like the hiring of Pirila in 2020, another miracle happened to student veterans at Loyola.
Fournier said, “We were reconsidered for the grant. They found that the funds became available. You know months of us thinking that we really did not get the grant. Honestly, it was a miracle.”
On May 17, 2023, Loyola announced that the MVSS office was awarded the grant from the Department of Education to create a Center of Excellence for Veteran Student Success. The new space opened on November 11, 2023.
Fournier’s dream of a safe space for student veterans to foster community and receive support came true because of her hard work, the people who worked alongside her, and miracles. Fournier graduated from Loyola last spring after earning her Master’s in Environmental Science. She still keeps in touch with Pirila and the student veterans who she met at Loyola. Fournier was Illinois Student Veteran Leader of the Year in 2022. Her impact on the MVSS office will be felt by the student veterans at Loyola for generations to come.
More information on the MVSS office can be found here.
