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Intent to transition: practicioner intentionality in supporting veteran transition in a graduate business program

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Intent to Transition: Practitioner Intentionality in Supporting Veteran Transition in a
Graduate Business Program

Matthew Lorscheider

Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
A dissertation submitted to the faculty
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Education

August 2023

© Copyright by Matthew Lorscheider 2023
All Rights Reserved

The Committee for Matthew K. Lorscheider certifies the approval of this Dissertation

Alyson Daichendt
Jennifer Phillips
Sheila Banuelos, Committee Chair

Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
2023

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Abstract
The 1946 GI Bill is widely credited with having created the modern U.S. higher education
system, and the Post-9/11 GI Bill led to an expansion of services available to veterans at U.S.
colleges and universities and the nonprofit veterans services industry. Despite this, veterans
struggle to adapt to civilian society and report a lower sense of belonging on college campuses.
At the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, the Master of Business
for Veterans (MBV) program offers a potential solution to this issue. Through a series of
interviews with key members of the program team, this study sought to understand their
interpretation of the intentionality of the MBV’s staff, faculty, and key volunteers in facilitating
the self-efficacy necessary for veterans to undertake this transition. Two theoretical models were
leveraged to form the theoretical and conceptual framework of this study: Bandura’s (1986)
social cognitive theory, specifically the principle of self-efficacy, and Schlossberg’s (1981, 1984)
transition theory, specifically the 4-S model. Interviewees responded to questions relating to the
structure, design, and practices of the MBV program across a variety of areas to understand the
intentionality of the key actors in facilitating military to civilian transition for student veterans.

v
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge my dissertation committee for their support and insights
throughout this process: Dr. Alyson Daichendt, Dr. Jennifer Phillips, and Dr. Sheila Banuelos.
To Dr. Banuelos, thank you so much for your patience and tenacity and for helping me stay the
course during very trying times. I wish you the best of health and happiness in the future.
To my wife, Gina, and our children, London and Berlin, thank you all so much for your
patience these last 3 years with many late nights on Zoom and late nights on campus, and for
supporting me all the way through. This is for you!
Dad, I finally did it! I hope that you can see me, and I know that if you can, you’re proud.
I miss you so much. To Mom, I love you, and I’m so grateful that you made it through the hard
times and can’t wait for you to read this.
Norbert, I wish I would have been able to see you one more time. Losing you took more
out of me than I thought it would. Hope you’re at peace and with Dad.
To my former colleagues, James, Jamie, Bob, Kevin, Chris, Kathy, and everyone else
whose lives touched mine at MBV: I hope this work honors everything you have put into this
program.
To Juanita, Bobby, Vanessa, Moni, Jackie, and everyone else I worked with and studied
with over the last 3 years, thank you for your support, encouragement, and not judging me for
talking so damn much. Never would have made it without y’all.
To the faculty, staff, and everyone else who is a part of the Rossier School of Education,
Marshall School of Business, and the University of Southern California: I am forever honored to
be a member of the Trojan Family. FIGHT ON!!!!!!

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Table of Contents
Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iv
Acknowledgements ..........................................................................................................................v
Chapter One: Introduction ...............................................................................................................1
Statement of the Problem: The Fraught Military to Civilian Transition .............................3
Purpose and Significance .....................................................................................................6
Theoretical Framework ........................................................................................................7
Methodology ......................................................................................................................10
Researcher’s Background ..................................................................................................10
Organization .......................................................................................................................11
Key Term Definitions ........................................................................................................12
Chapter Two: Review of The Literature ........................................................................................14
Veteran Transition to Higher Education ............................................................................15
Career Development ..........................................................................................................19
Supportive Pedagogical Models ........................................................................................22
Theoretical Framework ......................................................................................................27
Conclusion .........................................................................................................................31
Chapter Three: Methodology .........................................................................................................32
Research Questions ............................................................................................................32
Institutional Setting ............................................................................................................33
Researcher Positionality.....................................................................................................36
Study Design ......................................................................................................................37
Ethical Considerations .......................................................................................................40
Limitations .........................................................................................................................41
Document Analysis: MBV Internal Student Demographic and Outcome Data ................41

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Conclusion .........................................................................................................................43
Chapter Four: Findings of the Study ..............................................................................................45
Research Question 1 ..........................................................................................................46
Research Question 2 ..........................................................................................................57
Conclusion .........................................................................................................................68
Chapter Five: Discussion of the Findings ......................................................................................70
Limitations .........................................................................................................................70
Discussion of Findings .......................................................................................................71
Implications........................................................................................................................73
Recommendations ..............................................................................................................76
Conclusions ........................................................................................................................83
References ......................................................................................................................................85
Appendix A: Interview Protocol, Long Form ................................................................................95
Introduction ........................................................................................................................95
Setting the Stage ................................................................................................................96
Heart of the Interview ........................................................................................................97
Closing Question ................................................................................................................99
Closing Comments: ............................................................................................................99
Post-interview Summary and Reflection ...........................................................................99
Appendix B: Interview Protocol, Career Development ...............................................................100
Introduction ......................................................................................................................100
Setting the Stage ..............................................................................................................101
Heart of the Interview: Career Development Questions ..................................................102
Closing Question ..............................................................................................................103
Closing Comments ...........................................................................................................103

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Post-interview Summary and Reflection .........................................................................103
Appendix C: Information Sheet for Exempt Research ................................................................104

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Chapter One: Introduction
The military and military veterans have long been an important constituency of American
colleges and universities since the days long before the advent of the GI Bill, where a primary
role of many institutions was to train and prepare military officers for service and leadership in
the armed forces (Abrams, 1989). In the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. Government
created the first GI Bill, a massive entitlement package for veterans that included the promise of
a college education. This was a benefit that many of the millions of Americans who had served
in uniform during that war took advantage of in the years following the conflict, leading to a
massive influx of new enrollments in U.S. colleges and universities that fundamentally changed
higher education in this country (Olson, 1973). Arguably, many modern attitudes and
conventions toward the role of higher education in the life of an American adult find their origins
in the post-WWII GI Bill generation, which set the stage for the modern U.S. economy.
Ever since the first GI Bill, the promise of a college education has been a significant tool
for military recruiters to convince young men and women to enlist, especially in the years since
the Vietnam war ended, as the military moved to an all-volunteer force while still maintaining a
massive need for manpower, year after year. While the standing U.S. military today is still
among the largest in the world and larger than the pre-9/11 military I enlisted into in 2000, it is
much smaller now than even 30 years ago at the conclusion of the Cold War and the first Gulf
War. Despite this, the U.S. military has engaged in sustained overseas combat operations for
over 20 years. The burden of this continuous overseas combat service has been felt by a smaller
portion of the population than ever. In 2008, several years into the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,
the federal government passed a new and improved GI Bill that transformed the benefit from one
that, at best, provided enough to pay the rent while attending an inexpensive state university or
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community college (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 2022a). The benefit can now fund 4
years at the top-tier public institution in any state, and additional support allows students to use
the benefits at the most prestigious and expensive private universities in the country (U.S.
Department of Veterans Affairs, 2022b, 2022c).
The expansion of these benefits was supported with massive grant programs, like the
Department of Education’s Centers of Excellence for Veteran Student Success Grant, to develop
and sustain extensive support services for veterans on college campuses (U.S. Department of
Education, 2022). Prior to 2009, veterans’ services at colleges and universities often involved
officials whom the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs trained to certify student enrollment for
benefits. Now, veterans’ services on college campuses largely involve a veterans’ resource center
or similar facility, academic and/or career counseling, mental health services, and sometimes
tutoring, along with social supports like student organizations. While not every veteran leaving
the military goes directly to college, colleges and universities are among the most likely settings
for veterans and members of the military to begin transitioning back to civilian society and
prepare to participate in the civilian workforce (Holian & Adam, 2020).
Colleges and universities have responded to the challenge of supporting the military to
civilian transition in a number of different ways. Ultimately, this transition is often poorly
understood even by those experiencing it themselves and even less well understood by those who
have not experienced it. This study examined this transition through the lens of Schlossberg’s
(1981, 1984) transition theory and explored how the Master of Business for Veterans Program at
the USC Marshall School of Business addresses its students’ needs through the lens of the
program staff and faculty. To this end, this study addressed two research questions:
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1. How do the staff and faculty of the Master of Business for Veterans Program describe
the intentionality of the design and administration of the program with regard to
facilitating self-efficacy for transition in military veterans?
2. What services, functions and features of the program do the staff and faculty of the
Master of Business for Veterans Program describe as being most relevant to building
self-efficacy to navigate the transition process for military veterans?
Statement of the Problem: The Fraught Military to Civilian Transition
Transitioning from the military to civilian life is a complex transition that involves
multiple themes of personal identity and human needs. To many, the military is just a job, albeit
a unique one, and the transition is then just another career transition: leaving one job and finding
another job. To a large extent, this transition is driven by career change and the change of
identity that often accompanies this change. However, understanding this as simply a career
transition ignores much about what makes the military, and by extension, the military and
veteran community, unique.
A smaller percentage of Americans have served in the military in the last 20 years than
did during other relatively recent periods of conflict. During World War II, as much as 13% of
the U.S. population (U.S. Census Bureau, 1940) served in the armed forces (The National WWII
Museum, n.d.), including more than half of all military-aged men. In a 9-year period from 1964
to 1973, roughly 8.7 million Americans served during the Vietnam War, with roughly 2.7 million
of them serving in Vietnam itself. This was roughly 4% of the U.S. population at the time, based
on the 1970 census. According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (2022b), roughly 5
million men and women have served in the U.S. armed forces since September 11, 2001. This is
a period of over 20 years, during which time the U.S. population ranged from just over 282.2
4

million (in 2000) to 329.5 million (in 2020). Using the 2010 census total (309.3 million people)
as a rough median of the total U.S. population in this era, less than 2% has been a part of the
military post-9/11, despite the military engaging in consistent combat operations in two theaters
and many smaller operations throughout that period.
Thus, while the military consists entirely of volunteers, it is now detached from the
common experience of the U.S. citizenry. This is likely heightened by the intentionality of some
branches of the armed forces (notably the Marine Corps) in creating a distinct atmosphere of
separation from mainstream society. Members of the military are subject to a separate penal
system from the rest of the country, the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The military’s ethnic
and racial composition now parallels the larger U.S. population, but, despite massive gains made
by women in uniform in the 21st century, over 80% of those who serve in the U.S. military are
male (U.S. Department of Defense, 2020). Like many industries, the military has its own jargon,
but for many of its members, their entire social circle outside of work consists of other members
and their spouses. Indeed, work and personal life are inexorably intertwined due to the nature of
the work, the traditions of the armed services, and the relative isolation of many military base
communities. Spouses and children of military members often live largely in environments
where they socialize exclusively with one another, live on base, attend schools on base, and work
civilian jobs on base. For some military members, their sole connection to the non-military world
comes from a parent or sibling who did not join, and the longer someone stays in the military, the
more foreign the civilian world can become.
This is not to say that service members are socially isolated. In fact, it is often quite to the
contrary. Military units intentionally create fraternal atmospheres and promote group and
interpersonal dynamics that create and strengthen deep personal bonds between individuals
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within a unit (Siebold, 2007). Combat experience usually further deepens these bonds (Elder &
Clipp, 1989), often leading individuals to volunteer for additional combat or overseas duty to
avoid a feeling of having abandoned their comrades in a time of need. The repetition of rituals
reinforces these bonds, heavy use of symbolism and military jargon and slang, all combining to
form a dense and rich subculture that only those operating within it can fully understand.
When a member of the armed forces decides to leave the service, whether it be after a
single term of enlistment in 4 years or upon retirement at 20 years or more, those social bonds
and access to the military subculture are often lost, or seen as having been lost (Kintzle et al.,
2018). The clear sense of purpose and identity that comes with military service is also lost. Peer
groups tend to break apart as well: some leave the military and return to their hometown or the
hometown of a significant other, while others remain in the military and are reassigned to a new
duty station. The break from the military simultaneously disrupts an individual’s professional,
social and personal identity. This has led to a number of dismaying ills that affect the veteran
community more heavily than non-veterans. Specifically, veterans are at far greater risk of
suicide (Kang et al., 2015), housing instability and homelessness (Shane, 2021) and are less
likely to participate in the workforce (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2021) than their non-
veteran peers. Veterans also have marginally lower educational attainment than non-veterans
(Rolen, 2017) despite significant advantages in terms of admission, enrollment and financial
support in higher education. These issues are not unique to combat veterans (Kang et al., 2015)
but are heightened in the population who served in active combat (Morin, 2011).
A study by Elliott et al. (2011) of 66 student veterans at U.S. colleges and universities
uncovered that more than half of them reported feeling alienated from the campus community,
including faculty and other students. While these feelings of alienation were higher among
6

combat veterans, especially those diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), this
feeling was present among those who had not seen combat as well, highlighting the cultural gap
between the wartime military and a civilian society sheltered from the impacts and trauma of
war.
Purpose and Significance
As will be discussed in detail in Chapter Two, much of the contemporary literature
regarding veteran higher education transition calls for developing courses and programs
specifically for veterans or veteran/military-only learning communities or cohorts. Indeed, some
single courses exist at various institutions designed specifically for or solely for the military and
veteran student community. Student veteran clubs are widespread; some are part of the national
network of Student Veterans of America, and most U.S. college campuses have some form of
veterans’ resource center. However, at the time of this study, there was only one degree program
designed specifically for this population. The military has institutions like the various service
academies and service branch graduate schools, the Air Force has a community college, and
ROTC students at traditional institutions often study military science or other military studies
courses. However, these programs are designed to prepare and train military officers and non-
commissioned officers (NCOs) for future military service but not for separation from the military
and a return to civilian life.
The MBV program at the USC Marshall School of Business is designed specifically for
transitioning military leaders who seek to prepare for private sector leadership roles. The MBV
program’s core student demographic is members of the military who have significant experience
and seniority and are preparing to retire or end their careers or who have recently been
discharged. The program is a fully accredited master’s degree program consisting of 25 graduate-
7

level units in business designed to be completed by individuals with regular work commitments,
similar to an executive MBA program. There is no similar program elsewhere in higher
education, yet the potential for replication or inspiration is significant. As of the summer of 2023,
The MBV program was entering its 11th year and cohort and had more than 700 alumni. It has
been successful in supporting veteran transition; per the program’s internal data and publicly
available information, 99% of MBV students ultimately graduate, and over 90% are fully
employed within 6 months of program completion (Bogle & Lorscheider, 2021).
Higher education practitioners interested in understanding the MBV program’s success
and applying the lessons learned and best practices to create integrated supportive academic
programs for transitioning veterans can study the structure and written policies that govern the
MBV’s design and administration. However, that would only be part of the total picture. The
staff and faculty who designed the program and made daily decisions about admissions, career
development, faculty recruitment, and student discipline hold a significant amount of
institutional and practical knowledge. Their insights and experiences must be part of any study of
the MBV program and should live in any attempt to recreate or adapt it to another college or
university. Through this study and dissertation, the intent was to present the intentionality of the
MBV program team so that practitioners at other institutions will understand the intentionality
they must then apply to this work in their contexts.
Theoretical Framework
When a veteran arrives at an institution of higher education, that veteran is likely in a
state of transition, as described by Schlossberg et al. (1995): “an event … that results in changed
relationships, routines, assumptions and roles” (p. 27). Entering higher education is a transition
8

for all students, but the nature of the military makes the transition into higher education unique in
that the veteran is simultaneously transitioning into civilian society and the civilian workforce.
Schlossberg’s (1981, 1984) work on transition spans several decades and encompasses a
variety of models through which those in the counseling profession can view the transition
process and their role in assisting adults in transition. One such model is the 4-S model, in which
Schlossberg posited that transition can be viewed through four lenses or themes, each starting
with the letter S: situation, self, support, and strategies. Per Schlossberg, the person in transition
must move through each of these tropes to complete the transition process.
The first S is situation, where the transitioning party must assess the reason for the
transition and the environment wherein it takes place. This includes understanding the
transition’s relationship to a person’s social clock, the role changes involved, and its duration, as
well as an examination of concurrent stress. The self trope is an examination of factors relating
to the individual’s positionality and ways of knowing or outlook on life and their relationship
with the world outside. Support relates to social support, or the support social and familial
networks provide. Elliott et al. (2011) identified that social support from friends and family had a
strong negative correlation with feelings of alienation for veterans, both where PTSD was
present and where it was not. The final S is strategies, also known as coping responses, and can
be broken up into three categories: those that modify the situation, those that control the meaning
of the problem, and those that aid in managing the stress in the aftermath (Schlossberg et al.,
1995).
Schlossberg’s (1981, 1984) model is designed as a framework to help counselors advise
individuals to move through their own transition process; however, it can be overlaid strongly
with the role that a comprehensive support program within an institution of higher education can
9

play in assisting individuals in transition, for our purposes, military veterans. However,
Schlossberg’s transition theory is only one part of the framework, and another important
educational theory of practice forms another load-bearing segment of this framework as well:
Bandura’s (1986) social cognitive theory.
Social cognitive theory, at its roots, is the theory that human learning, and indeed human
behavior, is the result of the interaction of one’s environment, along with personal and
behavioral factors, and that individual cognition of the behaviors and actions of others affects
human development and actions (Bandura, 1986). To this end, Bandura centers the theory on the
concept of modeling, or that knowledge is developed through observation of other human
behaviors in the environment. Through modeling, a learner can predict or develop an expectation
of outcomes when engaging in a behavior. This learning is best facilitated when the learner can
identify or find commonality with the model and possesses higher levels of self-efficacy, which
can be developed through structured learning environments and proper modeling.
The supports the MBV program puts in place are intended to develop self-efficacy and
help students identify with behavioral models that can assist with the transition process. The
program’s cohort design, admissions policies, emphasis on the in-person experience and career
development process are all systems or structures within the program’s design and
implementation that contribute to the development of self-efficacy in MBV students. Using the
tools of social cognitive theory, the MBV program helps students achieve greater self-efficacy,
allowing them the confidence and resilience to approach the fraught transition process and move
through the 4-S model (Schlossberg, 1981, 1984) themselves.

10

Methodology
To understand the intentionality of the MBV program staff and faculty, it is necessary to
allow those individuals to describe their intentionality in their own words. Therefore, semi-
structured interviews were conducted with six current and former members of the MBV team.
The study population consisted of individuals who have or had some responsibility for the
development of program policies, curriculum, and operations. This included members of the
teaching faculty, the current and former academic directors of the program, the program’s full-
time staff members, and a key volunteer who is integral to the career development aspects of the
MBV program. Each of these individuals was well-positioned to answer the two research
questions at the heart of this study from various perspectives.
Instruments
Two interview instruments were developed (Appendices A and B), with each designed
for a subset of the study population. The first was a long-form instrument, with questions about
career development, the curriculum and course structure, and the admissions and recruiting
practices, designed for the staff and faculty of the program who have engaged in all three areas.
The second is much shorter and focused on the program's career development and networking
aspects, which was used for an interviewee who is a key volunteer in the program and whose
scope of work is limited to career development support. In this way, the study population was
spared the time and frustration involved in being asked questions not relevant to their area of
expertise and practice.
Researcher’s Background
For this study, my background as the researcher and author is of the utmost importance. I
am a Marine Corps combat veteran. I enlisted the summer before my high school graduation, at
11

the age of 17, and left home for boot camp 6 days after it. I served 4 years as a machine gunner,
including a deployment to Okinawa and other points around the Pacific Rim in 2001. I was in
Okinawa when the 9/11 attacks occurred and was deployed in the initial phase of the Iraq War in
2003. My college career began in 2003 while still in the military, using military tuition assistance
to pay for classes at the University of Phoenix. I received GI Bill educational benefits for nearly
my entire academic career at Long Beach City College and CSU Long Beach, including a
portion of my graduate program at CSU Long Beach. I began serving veterans in higher
education in 2009 while a graduate student at CSU Long Beach and continued that career at
Cerritos College and the nonprofit world, bringing me to my most recent role at the USC
Marshall School of Business.
From August 2018 until July 2022, I served as the career counselor and employer liaison
for the MBV, the program of focus in this study. Many of the individuals in this study’s
population were my colleagues for many years and are people with whom I am very close. My
own work has impacted the program, and I have certainly been impacted by what I learned from
my work in it over 4 years. This also significantly affects my bias toward the efficacy of the
program and the assumptions I make here.
Organization
This dissertation will be organized in a conventional five-chapter dissertation structure.
Chapter One briefly lays out the problem of practice, topic and research questions and briefly
lays out the theoretical framework and importance of the work. Chapter Two will be an
exploration of the academic literature surrounding this topic and the key themes at play,
including connections to the theoretical framework. Chapter Three presents an examination of
the research design and methodology in detail. Chapter Four will present the research, results and
12

findings, and Chapter Five will summarize the findings while exploring their implications for
future research and practice.
Key Term Definitions
Combat veteran: a veteran who has served in a designated combat theater (U.S.
Department of Veterans Affairs, 2011). For the purposes of this study, this term will largely refer
to veterans who experienced active combat.
Enlisted: refers to members of the armed forces who enlist directly into the military at the
lowest rank levels, usually those who enter the armed forces with little to no college education
(RecruitMilitary, n.d.).
GI Bill: a catch-all term for veterans’ educational benefits, first conferred by the GI Bill
of Rights of 1946. The most recent updates to the GI Bill’s education benefits are largely
referred to as the Post-9/11 GI Bill or, in some cases, Chapter 33 (U.S. Department of Veterans
Affairs, 2022b).
Non-commissioned officer: an enlisted member who has served long enough to have
reached a rank level that confers some authority, usually the fourth enlisted rank level (E-4) or
higher. Most of the training, operational leadership and human resources administration is
carried out by NCOs in the modern U.S. military (Arms, 1989).
Officer (commissioned officer): a senior member of the armed forces who is
commissioned by the head of state or legislature to have authority over others. These individuals
usually have attended and completed 4-year college degrees prior to entering the service or
attended military academies (RecruitMilitary, n.d.).
Transition: “Any event or non-event that results in changed relationships, routines,
assumptions and roles” (Schlossberg, 1984, p. 43).
13

Veteran: “a person who has served in the active military, naval or air service, and who
was discharged or released therefrom under conditions other than dishonorable” (38 U.S.C.
101(2)). For the purposes of this study, the word “veteran” may be used to refer to some students
who were serving in the military while attending school.

14

Chapter Two: Review of The Literature
Veterans experience challenges in transitioning from military to civilian life. Higher
education institutions are one of the primary sites for veterans to begin the transition process, and
strong student veteran programs and services can help veterans transition holistically from
service to student to civilian. Despite significant investments and infrastructure, military veterans
still suffer from high instances of sociological ills. Institutions of higher education have
supported student veterans in a number of ways in combating these ills and adjusting to campus
(and, by extension, civilian) life. While much work has been done to understand the root causes
of veteran transition issues and the ways in which colleges can begin to serve them, what
remains unexplored is an examination of what strategies and practices have the greatest impact
on student veteran transition and how those models can best be implemented across our U.S.
colleges and universities.
In the wake of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, veterans have experienced significant
difficulty transitioning back into civilian life, leading to increased rates of suicide (Kang et al.,
2015) and other sociological ills, including homelessness (Shane, 2021), lower workforce
participation (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2021), and marginally lower educational
attainment (Rolen, 2017). There is much literature on the various reasons for these struggles.
Pease et al. (2016) summarized much of this work as they identified multiple reasons the
transition is difficult even if a veteran was not actually deployed to combat (Kang et al., 2015),
though having served in combat heightens the challenges (Morin, 2011). One of the reasons
Elliott et al. (2011) identified is a cultural disconnect, where veterans who served in an
institution at war return to a civilian culture largely disconnected from that war.
15

This study focused on the MBV program housed in the Marshall School of Business at
the University of Southern California. Offered since 2013, this is a cohort-style on-ground
accredited program designed to assist transitioning military leaders as they transition to new
civilian careers. The program, loosely based on USC Marshall’s Executive MBA Program, was
conceived in and operates with established principles of transition and career theory while filling
its students’ need gaps as identified by educational scholars across the country. This dissertation
focused on the intentionality of the staff and faculty toward creating and administering a program
designed to support armed forces members’ and veterans’ transition into the civilian world via
business instruction and career preparation.
This literature review will focus on veteran transition into higher education, with
attention to work done on challenges in veteran transition as well as studies examining how
veterans are prepared for transition. From there, academic work surrounding career education
and preparation, especially the concept of career decision self-efficacy (CDSE), will be
examined. Literature on various forms of supportive pedagogical models and their effectiveness
will be discussed as well. Lastly, the theoretical framework that undergirds this study, an
interaction between Schlossberg’s (1981, 1984) transition theory and Bandura’s (1986) social
cognitive theory, will be explored.
Veteran Transition to Higher Education
Beginning with the advent of the Post-9/11 GI Bill, there is a glut of educational research
literature on the topic of veterans in higher education. For example, DiRamio et al. (2008)
conducted interviews with 25 student veterans who had served in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan,
with the results informing publications in 2008 (prior to the implementation of the Post-9/11 GI
Bill) and 2009. DiRamio et al. applied Schlossberg’s (1981, 1984) transition theory, focusing on
16

the moving in, moving through, moving out conceptual model in understanding the transition
that veterans face upon leaving service, and proposed a holistic approach to veteran services on
campus. This call is echoed in the findings from subsequent work based on this research, finding
that “combat veterans are a student population with special needs and require support from both
policymakers and program providers” (Ackerman et al., 2009, p. 5) and relating numerous
interview responses that focused on the difficulty of adapting the survival skills necessary in
combat to skills that function well in a classroom environment and in civilian settings.
Persky and Oliver (2010) studied veterans in the community college setting, exploring
ways in which institutions could better support veteran transition. Among their myriad findings,
they noted that “a more holistic approach to the education of veterans is needed” with
suggestions, including “courses offered in a cohort (learning community) format” (p. 115).
O’Herrin (2011), in a short paper providing an overview of the characteristics and needs of
veterans in college, noted that through focus groups and interviews with student veterans, a
number of supportive concepts emerged that colleges and universities had begun to implement or
suggested implementing. These measures included “[ensuring] veterans receive a thorough
introduction to the university through an orientation” and “[investigating] the possibility of
creating veteran-specific learning communities on campus” (p. 17). Jordan (2019) interviewed
veterans at a community college in the South, examining the challenges of disconnect between
veterans and the larger non-veteran community, noting responses ranging from annoyance at the
immaturity of college students only slightly younger than the veterans themselves to PTSD
flashback episodes triggered by innocuous behaviors. While Jordan emphasized the role of a
veterans center as a primary space for social interaction and collaboration between veterans, he
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also noted that it is incumbent upon staff and faculty to understand the veteran transition
experience and support veterans with intentionality.
In many ways, the MBV program addresses many of the unmet needs addressed by the
literature, much of which was written as the MBV program was being planned or in its infancy.
While the effectiveness of the program in addressing these needs is not under study here, the
intentionality of the staff and faculty that Jordan (2019) mentions as it relates to facilitating
veteran transition is at the heart of this study.
Challenges in Veteran Transition to College
The topic of veteran transition to college life has been the result of a number of studies,
leading to sometimes contrasting results. Durdella and Kim (2012) examined the issue of
integration through a lens of academic success (measured by GPA) and sense of belonging for
undergraduate student veterans in the University of California system, utilizing data from the
2008 University of California Undergraduate Experience Survey. They discovered that veterans
had lower GPAs and reported a lower sense of belonging in college than their non-veteran peers,
which they attributed to the fact that veterans tended to be older than average undergraduate
students, with family and employment commitments that limited their ability to engage in
extracurricular activities that build a sense of community on campus. They conclude that
“student veterans enter college with a distinct set of experiences and characteristics related to
their military service, uniquely experience college academically and socially, and leave college
with lower GPA and sense of belonging” (p. 123).
Young (2017) quantified survey responses collected from 391 student veterans from three
4-year public universities in the United States. She utilized a PTSD checklist designed for
military veterans, a patient health questionnaire designed to screen for depression, and a student
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stress survey to measure the reliability of a scale devised for the study to measure veteran
acclimatization to college (VAC). She realized a strong negative correlation between both PTSD
and student stress to the VAC score and noted that the average VAC score of her respondents
(43.8 out of a possible 65) was below the score at which she determined that student veterans
could be “at risk for adjustment problems” (p. 9). In contrast, work by Williams-Klotz and
Gansemer-Topf (2017) that studied student veterans at multiple community colleges in a single
Midwestern state (the student veterans surveyed were overwhelmingly non-Hispanic white
males) noted that service-connected disabilities, such as PTSD, did not have a strong correlation
to GPA or “intent to return” (persistence) (p. 432), but noted that student academic preparedness
and self-efficacy were primary predictors of these measures and recommended that institutions
should “develop or maintain programs that provide academic preparation prior to military-
connected students enrollment” (p. 433).
Morrill and Somers (2020) reported similar findings in their study of student veterans
enrolled in Texas community colleges, where they revealed that student veterans attained success
(for their purposes, completion of a certificate or associate’s degree or transfer to a 4-year
institution within a 4-year window) at significantly lower rates than their peers, and noting that
“the low GPA … seems to suggest a weakness in previous academic preparation” (p. 639). This
is especially noteworthy given the Texas community college system’s policy of granting
extensive credit for military professional education and other training, as Morrill and Somers
(2020) noted.
Preparation for Transition
The transition from military to higher education sets the tone for further transition, but
the military might not adequately prepare veterans to transition. The military’s Transition
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Assistance Program (TAP), or Transition Goals, Programs and Services (GPS), is a standard
course of which most members of the armed services must undergo a variant within the last few
months of active duty. This program and its predecessors are regarded as effective to some extent
in improving outcomes for veterans in the workforce. Hogan (2016) conducted an interview-
based study of recent Air Force and Army retirees and found that those who retired from active
service after at least 20 years and who may have completed college before discharge felt that
TAP was effective in improving their employment outcomes. Others (including me) feel that
TAP is ineffective in preparing veterans for higher education. This observation is supported by
Odom (2019), who interviewed student veterans about their experiences in these programs.
Odom noted the program was ineffective at preparing college-bound veterans for higher
education and recommended various changes to the program and the transition process.
One emergent recommendation was for institutions to provide “a cohort-style model for
transitioning veterans to higher education” (Odom 2019, p. 110), and Odom cited examples of
such courses at the University of Arizona and Kennedy-King College in Chicago, which he also
evaluated, though the results were mixed (p. 111). Odom’s sample population was six veterans,
but the narrative of the interviewees around the perceived inadequacies of military
TAP/Transition GPS underscores larger-scale quantitative findings that veterans are
underprepared for transition to college (Morrill & Somers, 2020; Williams-Klotz & Gansemer-
Topf, 2017). Ultimately, Odom supported the idea that veteran transition programs at institutions
of higher education could serve as an alternative to the military’s TAP/Transition GPS programs.
Career Development
Given the emphasis on transitions in this study, a review of the literature also includes an
overview of career-related theory as it relates to student veterans in postsecondary education.
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One of the big five career theories that can help understand the role of career development in the
lives of veterans in transition is the social cognitive career theory (SCCT), first put forth by Lent
et al. (1994) based on Bandura’s (1986) social cognitive theory. In SCCT, the role of social,
cultural, and structural elements surrounding the individual are a significant factor in their
decisions relating to career paths. The way in which the MBV program does or does not engage
with these sociostructural elements in its career development strategy will be a key factor in
understanding its effectiveness in career transition.
Career Decision Self-Efficacy
The concept of CDSE was essential in Lent et al.’s (1994) development of SCCT and
traces its roots back to work around vocational decision-making as far back as the 1970s. The
CDSE concept itself was introduced in a 1983 work by Taylor and Bentz, where they applied an
element of Bandura’s (1977) theory of self-efficacy in the context of earlier work around career
decision-making to develop a CDSE scale. This scale allowed for a quantifiable way of
measuring the effectiveness of career development and career education programs in higher
education, leading to a number of studies using the scale to measure the success of various types
of interventions in the career field. Many of these studies were aggregated into a meta-analysis
(Choi et al., 2012) to determine the personal factors most correlated with CDSE. Considering 41
different studies analyzing CDSE across demographic and self-concept factors, the meta-analysis
led to the conclusion that demographic factors, such as race and gender, were not strongly
correlated with CDSE, but self-concept factors, such as self-esteem and vocational identity,
along with environmental factors, such as peer support, led to stronger positive correlations.
Thus, interventions with the social cognitive model in mind could be useful in building strong
CDSE in students.
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The way in which interventions via career learning or career development programming
can impact CDSE has been the topic of a number of relatively recent works. Grier-Reed and
Ganuza (2012) studied the impact of constructivist career learning interventions on CDSE in
TRiO students or college students participating in a federal program for disadvantaged
individuals. Using the CDSE scale in pre- and post-testing, they found that career learning had a
strong positive correlation with increased CDSE. Like MBV’s career development program
(CDP), the constructivist programming described by Grier-Reed and Ganuza is oriented on
helping students construct or re-define their own identities, growing CDSE by changing self-
identification and self-image—connecting to the self theme in Schlossberg’s (1981, 1984) 4-S
model. Additionally, Reddan (2015) studied an elective career development learning program for
undergraduate students at Griffith University in Australia, with an emphasis on activities related
to self-awareness, opportunity awareness and aspirations, with the CDSE scale measured before
and after the program. Reddan found that the CDP, rooted in the SOAR model (Kumar, 2007),
with similar points of emphasis to that of the MBV program, led to increased CDSE for the
students in the study as well.
Career Development Instruction
Career transition is an important factor in the veteran-to-civilian transition, and like many
college students, many student veterans seek an education to support their career goals. In a 2015
survey, 86% of service members indicated that career advancement was a primary motivation for
them to pursue higher education both during and after their time in the military (Zoli et al.,
2015). Robertson and Eschenauer (2020) surveyed student veterans to understand their
perceptions relating to college to career transition—with a survey instrument rooted in the 4-S
model—and found that “college and campus culture can challenge the otherwise confident and
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motivated student veteran, due to lack of structure/order/ unified services, lack of peer
connections, uncertainty about policies and procedures, the need to balance adult life
responsibilities, such as families and employment, and a disconnect between military and higher
education culture” (p. 60), which could potentially lead to lower CDSE and impact future career
planning. Hunter-Johnson (2020) examined how military pedagogical and cultural practices are
at odds with those in the civilian world, which creates transition issues for veterans, and
ultimately posited that veterans must adapt to civilian education to prepare to transition to
civilian employment.
Supportive Pedagogical Models
As noted, much of the literature examining student veteran outcomes and attitudes in
higher education results in recommendations for veteran-specific academic support beyond
resource centers and other student services. This connects to another theory relevant to
understanding how the MBV program supports veteran transition: the theory of culturally
relevant pedagogy, first advanced by Ladson-Billings (1995). For Ladson-Billings, student
success can be enhanced or improved, in terms of academic outcomes and sense of belonging, by
teaching and curriculum designed to relate to the students’ specific cultural context. This theory,
widely applied in racial and ethnic minority contexts, can also relate to military veterans.
Veterans have developed a subculture through the shared experiences of training, military
service, combat, and other high-risk roles, as well as the traditions and insular nature of the
military itself. Designing course delivery, curriculum, support services and social interaction
settings in a manner that is relevant to the specific cultural experience of military veterans could
help veterans learn and acculturate simultaneously.
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Work by Heddy et al. (2016) around Dewey’s theory on optimal experience underscores
the transformative effect of education. Dewey’s principle of active use, or “intentionally thinking
about classroom concepts within their everyday experience” (p. 566), is applicable to a culturally
relevant pedagogy for veterans that relates the subject matter back to an experience likely to be
shared by most of the student population, or at least one that is jointly understood as a cultural
trope, like combat experience. Thus, applying culturally relevant pedagogy by employing active
use can activate educational experiences in a transformative way. This seems to undergird the
examples provided by Odom (2019) and Hembrough (2017), especially Hembrough, and when
this type of curriculum is used within a veteran cohort or learning community model, which is in
and of itself a culturally relevant program design, the literature suggests a strong potential for
holistic transition support.
Cohort Models in Higher Education
One recurring theme in the recommendations of the literature around transition was the
establishment of “learning communities” specifically for veterans or veteran cohorts. Cohorts or
learning communities are widely established as a best practice for adult learners or students over
25, a category to which most student veterans belong. There is significant literature on the role of
cohort models in supporting adult and non-traditional learners. Brooks (1998) noted that
scholarship had begun indicating a sea change toward more collaborative learning and studied a
group of adult learners in a cohort-style program at the University of Alberta utilizing a student
survey. The students reported that the cohort was a supportive influence, leading to the
conclusion that cohorts are “an exemplar model of adult education” (Brooks, 1998, p. 71). Maher
(2004) pointed out that cohorts can support cognitive development and student performance
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while supporting students’ social and emotional development and their connectivity to their
peers.
Similarly, Maher (2005) studied 13 students in a cohort-style graduate program for K–12
teachers at George Mason University. Maher noted that institutions offering cohort learning must
be very intentional in its administration before and during the program to manage students’
expectations and performance. McCarthy et al. (2005), referring to the work of Maher and
others, noted that two themes had emerged in their experiences and in the literature regarding
cohorts: cohorts as a group and cohorts as a culture. They noted that students saw a cohort’s
group dynamics as a major factor in their success and that the cohort model was especially
effective for students with obligations aside from school, such as children and careers.
Tisdell et al. (2004) described how an online cohort in graduate school can be an
effective support even before Zoom and other forms of video conferencing developed into what
they are today. Additionally, Collins (2006) and Dillard (2006) wrote that the cohort model
helped undergraduate students improve educational outcomes and experiences, along with being
better supported as adult learners. Much of the work done in the last 2 decades on cohort models
in higher education has referenced Saltiel and Russo’s (2001) work on the topic. Maher (2005)
referenced Saltiel and Russo’s mention of cohorts existing in professional education fields like
law and medicine long before their rising popularity in other forms of higher education.
Recently, Opacich (2019) found that a learning community was a factor in positive
retention and completion rates for non-veteran adult learners in public health career training. It
should be noted that within the military, the cohort style of learning is primary. Nearly every
veteran who has served in the United States and most militaries on the globe in the past century
has entered the military with a form of basic training conducted in a cohort style meant to
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indoctrinate recruits into the unit-oriented ethos of the armed forces. Nearly all professional
training within the military is conducted in a cohort style, with individuals coming together to
form a temporary unit (often officially) for the purpose of completing training. In large segments
of the military, especially on Navy warships and in ground combat units of the Army and Marine
Corps, the cohort style is the de facto way of life and of working. Individuals live, eat and train
together and often spend their free time with each other as well, and goals are measured through
group or unit, rather than individual achievement.
Online Education
Veterans, like a growing number of other non-traditional students, are increasingly likely
to choose online programs when deciding to pursue a college education. This is more likely to be
true of veterans than other working professionals and adult learners, probably because of the
extent to which online higher education has penetrated the armed services. Because of the nature
of military life, with regular moves between duty stations and extended deployments overseas,
online school is often the only way members of the military can gain an education while on
active duty. Online schools, such as Central Texas College, the University of Maryland Global
Campus, and the University of Phoenix, market heavily in the military community, and Syracuse
University created an Institute for Veterans and Military Families that provides both online and
in-person cohort-based certificate programs.
Additionally, Kirchner and Pepper (2020) examined how student veterans can be
adequately supported in an online environment and cited statistics on veterans in online
education, including that “18% of student veterans completed all their courses online, as opposed
to 12% of non-military students,” and, related to this study, that 41% of student veterans who
were in graduate school participated in online degree programs (Radford et al., 2016, p. 4).
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Kirchner and Pepper noted that veterans transitioning into online higher education are entering a
much less rigid and structured world while missing the opportunities for social bonds and
camaraderie they experienced in the military. Their study is of a particular Midwestern
community college that is engaged in a partnership with the Community College of the Air Force
to provide accredited online classes to active-duty Air Force personnel (Kirchner & Pepper,
2020). They describe three key areas of focus for the college’s engagement program: information
sharing, community building and professional development, which are the categories in which
their outreach and engagement efforts are organized (Kirchner & Pepper, 2020). That said,
Kirchner and Pepper only offer anecdotal evidence of increased engagement by these online
students, and there is scant literature elsewhere supporting the idea that online veteran students
can receive the same level of engagement as those physically on campus.
Veteran-Specific Support Models
While the cohort model can support adult learners in general, various types of supportive
classroom learning models and best practices intended specifically for veterans have emerged in
the literature as well. Hunter-Johnson and colleagues (2021) conducted a qualitative study
utilizing a focus group of student veterans (predominantly women) to better understand their
“perceptions of higher education as a tool for transitioning,” as well as their perceptions of the
challenges they face in pursuing higher education. Their findings uncovered a theme of tension
between veterans and the civilian campus community, which they asserted is connected to a
disconnect between civilian classrooms and military pedagogical practices that “mimic tenets
found in behaviorism” (Hunter-Johnson et al., 2021, p. 2). The authors concluded that
institutions and instructors need to ensure their pedagogical practices align with the non-
traditional nature of veteran students and that veterans must unlearn the military’s highly
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structured learning environments to succeed as college students. Hunter-Johnson (2020) asserted
that “it is incumbent upon adult educators to provide a learning environment that not only
provides support but also assists veterans with holistic development and properly prepares them
for the ultimate transition to the civilian workforce” (p. 120). Therefore, it is ever more important
that higher education institutions are cognizant of the issues veterans face in transition and
intentionally provide support to promote their positive movement.
The literature does contain examples of supportive on-campus cohort-style programs
specifically for veterans that are already in place. As referenced above, Odom (2019) examined
two veteran transition support courses, one at a community college and one at a 4-year public
institution. Hembrough (2017) facilitated and studied a pilot 1st-year writing composition
program at Southeastern Oklahoma State University that combined veterans and ROTC cadets to
create a military learning community, with reading and writing assignments often relating to the
students’ military experiences. Students were surveyed and reported that they found the program
“valuable in providing a safe, welcoming place to discuss their military-related experiences:
helping them acclimate to university expectations, lifestyles and dynamics,” (p. 159) along with
achieving the student learning outcomes for 1st-year composition. Hembrough suggested that
this type of veteran-focused composition program be more widely adopted at other institutions of
higher education. There remains space in the literature for a thorough examination of other
comprehensive supportive programs for student veterans.
Theoretical Framework
Schlossberg’s Transition Theory
This study focused on the concept of transition, framed by Schlossberg’s (1981, 1984)
transition theory. Schlossberg referred to the transition event itself as a traumatic or impactful
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event that can have a negative effect on the individual’s ability to adapt to new situations.
Schlossberg advanced the process of taking stock, involving the examination of four domains, or
the four Ss: situation, support, self, and strategies (Schlossberg et al., 1995), through which the
individual must navigate their transition. In examining any program that states as its primary
mission serving those in transition, the 4-S framework, designed by Schlossberg to be conducted
by the transitioning person, can be a useful way for examining how the MBV program is or is
not designed and operating with the intent to resolve the challenges inherent in transition for
military veterans.
Schlossberg’s (1981, 1984) transition theory and various related conceptual models
advanced by Schlossberg and others to support the theory underpin a significant amount of the
literature on the topic of veteran transition. Schlossberg’s moving in, moving through, moving
out model was used as a theoretical framework for DiRamio et al.’s 2008 work, with the veteran
having moved in, out and through their military experience and then returning to the moving-in
phase upon entering higher education. Odom (2019) used the moving in, moving out, moving
through framework to frame his study on veterans’ attitudes toward TAP, asserting that their
position in the model would shape their views of the program. Jordan’s (2019) research on
student veteran transition to community college was also framed by Schlossberg, in this case
specifically by the 4-S model of individual transition. The 4-S model also framed the work on
student veteran perceptions of higher education by Robertson and Eschenauer (2020), where the
study instrument provided responses that could be categorized into the four categories laid out by
Schlossberg for personal transition: self, situation, support, and strategies. Hunter-Johnson
utilized Schlossberg as a framework for her work on student veterans, seeing the moving in,
moving through, moving out and 4-S models as working in concert to frame her examination of
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the disconnect between military culture and that of higher education (Hunter-Johnson, 2020) and
in a study of predominantly women veterans and their perceptions of campus life and their own
integration (Hunter-Johnson et al., 2021).
Like many of the aforementioned works, this study asserts that veterans’ transition out of
the military and into civilian life is a form of transition, as defined by Schlossberg and others.
The 4-S model is the conceptual model employed most heavily in the coming pages to uncover
how the MBV program team deploys various supports, structures and interventions to facilitate
the veterans’ movement through the 4-S model. However, to understand how these systems work
to facilitate the veteran’s movement through the model, it is important to understand a key
education and learning theory that the MBV team largely operates with, knowingly or
unknowingly: Bandura’s (1986) social cognitive theory.
Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory
Bandura’s (1986) social cognitive theory emerged from social learning theory, advanced
in earlier work, and is the theory that human learning and behavior depend on the interplay
between individual cognition and environmental factors. Bandura (1977) identified the concept
of self-efficacy, or the confidence of an individual in his or her ability to achieve certain
objectives or shape their environment and outcomes. This self-efficacy, in turn, leads to changes
in how an individual engages with environmental and social inputs. According to Bandura, four
influences or sources can help an individual achieve greater self-efficacy: performance
accomplishments, vicarious experience, social persuasion, and physiological and emotional
states. Of these four, vicarious experience and social persuasion can be impacted by modeling, or
by the individual having an example of another person, especially one with whom they can
identify, performing the desired behaviors and having the expected positive outcomes.
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As noted previously, much of the MBV program’s career development work, which I
directed for 4 years, is rooted in fostering CDSE, which is a component of SCCT (Lent et al.,
1994), a treatment of Bandura’s (1977) theory as applied to career development and career
education. Significant literature around SCCT and career development self-efficacy exists for
various student groups, including Olson’s (2014) use of SCCT as a framework for understanding
barriers and supports for first-generation college students. Lam and Santos (2018), studying 1st-
year Malaysian college students, utilized Bandura’s (1977) four sources of self-efficacy as a
framework for gauging the effectiveness of career development interventions. Specifically, Lam
and Santos studied students enrolled in a career decision-making course rooted in the principles
of CDSE. Similar to the MBV program’s internal CDP, the program focused on self-appraisal
and provided occupational information-gathering instruction. As has been the case in most
similar studies, the career development instruction was correlated with higher CDSE for students
who undertook the course.
In this work, the social cognitive theory and its derivative theory SCCT with the models
of self-efficacy and CDSE formed much of the structural framework upon which I analyzed data
and structured the findings. Social cognitive theory and the various sources of self-efficacy
described by Bandura (1977) allowed me to categorize the structures and supports put forth by
the MBV program and the intent relayed to me by interviewees regarding those structures and
supports.
When used in conjunction with Schlossberg’s (1981, 1984) 4-S schematic, the ways in
which the MBV program’s team members describe their efforts to support self-efficacy in
accordance with Bandura’s (1977) theory were matched with a category in the 4-S model that the
veteran is assisted in moving through by increased self-efficacy within that particular trope.
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Conclusion
There is a significant and growing recent academic literature, especially over the past 15
years, which seeks to explore the issues of veteran integration into higher education, veteran
acculturation to campus life, and veteran success or lack of success in undertaking studies at
colleges and universities. Like this study, much of that work is also framed by Schlossberg’s
(1981, 1984) important work around adult transition, which stands to reason, as the transition
from military life to civilian life is by all measures a significant one for anyone undertaking it.
While this study fits firmly into an extensive and growing literature on veteran
transition, I found no prominent examples in this literature that focused on the narratives of
practitioners in the veterans’ services space. Rather, the work tends to focus on qualitative
studies of the veterans themselves or quantitative analyses of veteran outcomes and indicators.
Given that the program of study here, MBV, is a rarity in that it is a degree program intended
solely for military veterans, it stands to reason that this study is one of very few to study veteran
transition in higher education from the point of view of the faculty, staff, and administration of
the institution itself.

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Chapter Three: Methodology
The University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business has operated the
MBV since 2013. The program is marketed primarily to military leaders preparing to transition
out of the military or those who have recently separated. The program’s staff, faculty and
volunteers are tasked with running a fully accredited graduate business program at a top-20
business school and supporting military veterans through a highly fraught transition to civilian
life. Some program team members focus their efforts on career development, as I did during my
4 years as the MBV program’s career counselor and employer liaison. Other members focus on
admissions, faculty selection and academic programming. Every full-time team member
participates in recruitment, orientation and marketing to some extent or another. While program
design, retention and completion, along with job placement data, are all important, equally if not
more important is the wealth of knowledge about veterans, about transition, and about supporting
veterans in transition that is brought to bear in every aspect of the program’s administration by
the team, and this dissertation aims to be a repository, a record of that knowledge.
Research Questions
There are two research questions at the heart of this study:
1. How do the staff and faculty of the Master of Business for Veterans program describe
the intentionality of the design and administration of the program with regard to
facilitating self-efficacy for transition in military veterans?
2. What services, functions and features of the program do the staff and faculty of the
Master of Business for Veterans program describe as being most relevant to building
self-efficacy to navigate the transition process for military veterans?
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These are both process questions, essentially asking the people who work in the program
to describe “how it works” to generate the “thick descriptions” necessary to understand processes
(McEwan & McEwan, 2003, p. 8).
Using the research question checklist, these questions address population (institutional
actors) and setting (USC Marshall MBV program), articulate central concepts and relationships
(program design/policies and veteran transition), match language to purpose (“how do the staff
and faculty … describe”), and anticipate the necessary data (insights from institutional actors).
However, admittedly, there is an underlying assumption that the MBV program does support
veteran transition. This assumption is largely informed by my positionality, which is addressed
below, as well as self-reported and program data reported on retention and job placement, which
will be discussed later in this chapter.
The question put forth “articulate[s] what a researcher wants to know about the intentions
and perspectives of those involved in social interactions” (Agee, 2009, p. 432) and is suited to a
qualitative exploration of the intent of those who shape the form and function of the MBV
program, though the intent is to use this as a case study, rather than an ethnography.
Institutional Setting
As noted above, the program that is being studied is the MBV program at the University
of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business. The MBV, which began operating in
2013, is a 10-month, fully accredited program taught by the same faculty and in the same campus
facilities as the Marshall School’s other programs. At the time of this study, the number of units
required was 25, but an increase to 27 was instituted after this study’s completion. The Marshall
School of Business is one of the nation’s highest-ranked business schools, according to the U.S.
News and World Report and Bloomberg.
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The Marshall School of Business is housed on the main University Park campus of the
University of Southern California, located in South Los Angeles. Aside from the period between
March 2020 and August 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic, the MBV program has always
been an on-ground or in-person program, with classes meeting every other Friday and Saturday
between late July and early May of the following year (with a break for most of December).
While the majority of MBV students live in the greater Los Angeles area, a significant portion of
students commute to class from San Diego County (where there are a number of military
installations), with another smaller portion of every cohort commuting from outside of Southern
California. The MBV program has in the past had students who resided in Tennessee, Georgia,
Louisiana, and Hawaii, among other states, who regularly flew to Los Angeles to attend classes.
The MBV program’s demographics reflect in many ways the demographics of the U.S.
military and the veteran/military community of Southern California. In a 3-year span, including
MBV Cohorts VI, VII and VIII (the graduating classes of 2019, 2020, and 2021), the MBV
program served 283 students across the 3 years, of whom 83.7% identified as males, with an
average student age at intake of 35.5 years. Roughly 45% of students self-identified as non-
Hispanic Whites, 27.5% as Hispanic/Latino, 16% as Asian or Pacific Islander, and 11% as
Black. Nearly 51% of these students were first-generation college students (Bogle &
Lorscheider, 2021). Compared with the data from the Department of Defense’s 2020
demographic report, the MBV program has a higher proportion of Hispanic/Latino and Asian or
Pacific Islander students and a smaller proportion of Black students but approximately the same
preponderance of men (U.S. Department of Defense, 2020).
In one key way, the MBV is not reflective of the makeup of the military by rank structure
and education. Because enlisted personnel are not required to complete college degrees to enter
35

service, and because it may take many years for an active-duty enlisted service member to
complete an undergraduate degree, the MBV program trends heavily toward officers and senior
enlisted personnel. In fact, the average length of military service among MBV students is over 9
years. A stated admissions requirement for “3 years of military leadership experience” also
shapes the rank and time of service demographics. For the three cohorts studied by Bogle and
Lorscheider (2021), more than 62% of the students were prior enlisted (the data did not capture
commissioned officers who had also served in the enlisted ranks), with nearly 86% of all
students having reached the ranks between E-4 through E-7 or O-2 through O-4. By comparison,
over 82% of current U.S. military personnel are enlisted, and roughly 61% of them are in the
aforementioned ranges of pay grade (U.S. Department of Defense, 2020). According to program
data, the best career outcomes and GPAs also belonged to these groups (Bogle & Lorscheider,
2021).
Also, unlike the larger military community, the Marine Corps was the most common
branch of service represented in the MBV program, with 36% of the students in the period
studied having served in that branch, compared to less than 12% of current military personnel.
This likely owes to the physical proximity of the major Marine Corps installations at Camp
Pendleton and 29 Palms to the USC campus.
According to anecdote, the MBV program began when then deputy director of the
California Department of Veterans Affairs (CalVet), Rocky Chavez, traveled the state shortly
after the passage of the Post-9/11 GI Bill, asking colleges and universities to establish degree
programs for veterans. In 2011, the Marshall School’s Department of Executive Education
created a program, and the idea for MBV was born. Under the leadership of Marshall faculty, the
MBV program was designed using Marshall’s Executive MBA Program’s model. The program’s
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first cohort of about 35 students enrolled in the fall of 2013, and Dr. Robert Turrill, who briefly
served in the Army in the 1950s, was the academic director. Shortly thereafter, James Bogle, a
recently retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, was hired as the program director.
The MBV program takes 10 months to complete. The program is designed in a cohort
style, with students attending classes together (usually divided into two sections for logistical
purposes) on campus every other Friday and Saturday beginning in late July and graduating the
following May. Most students are employed in civilian jobs, with a significant portion on active
or reserve duty in the military. The ninth cohort of the program graduated in May of 2022, and at
the time of this study, there were more than 700 alumni. Of the students who attempted the
program, roughly 98% graduated on time with their cohort, and the program has over a 99%
graduation rate. Additionally, more than 90% of the program’s graduates were employed within
6 months of graduation.
Since the initiation of this study, a second MBV program has been created at Emory
University in Georgia. This study is, to my knowledge, the first academic study of the program,
though Turrill (2020) published a book about his experiences as MBV’s faculty director that
shaped my understanding of his intent in the program’s creation and administration and, in many
ways, inspired this work.
Researcher Positionality
I am a former member of the MBV program staff, having served as the program’s career
counselor and employer liaison for nearly 4 years, which means I have a deep understanding of
the program and its policies and practices. I am also a military veteran, having undertaken the
fraught transition process in my early 20s after serving a combat tour in Iraq. That said, I
transitioned from the Marine Corps after only 4 years of service and began my undergraduate
37

studies at that time. I do not see the MBV program as a program that would have served me or
veterans like me in the early transition phase.
I served as the career counselor and employer liaison for nearly 4 years, from August
2018 until July 2022. As a full-time program team member, I participated in recruiting
information sessions nearly every month, was on campus for class weekends on Fridays and
Saturdays (aside from the times class was moved online due to COVID), and attended weekly
staff meetings and admissions meetings occasionally, though I did not have a vote on the
admissions committee. I was responsible for leading volunteer engagement efforts and was the
de facto corporate relations head due to the employer liaison portion of my role. Furthermore, I
was accountable for job placement and employment rates after graduation. The mission of MBV
was also my mission, so this project was personal to me. Having recently left the MBV team, I
see this report as part of the legacy I leave and have contributed to.
Study Design
Data Collection
This is a qualitative study, relying on semi-structured interviews with the MBV program
staff and faculty using open-ended questions. Open-ended questions are appropriate in this case
because the research questions at play all require the description or narrative of the study
participants themselves. Rich descriptions are key in unlocking the data’s transferability or
relatability (Creswell & Creswell, 2018); to gather a rich, narrative response, there must be an
opportunity—indeed, a mandate—for participants to respond to questions with detailed
responses rather than simple yes or no answers.
There are two different versions of the interview protocol (see appendices A and B), each
targeted at a different segment of the study population. One version contains several questions
38

relating to career development (Appendix B) and was given to one member of the team who
focuses their work on that area. The remaining interviews were conducted using a long-form
protocol that includes the same general and career-specific questions and questions relating to
program structure, curriculum, admissions, and recruiting (Appendix A).
Interviews were all conducted via Zoom with video disabled, so sound could easily be
recorded and transcribed while still maintaining a semblance of anonymity/confidentiality for
interviewees. One interview was conducted over the phone, but with me also on Zoom so that
Zoom could still record and auto-transcribe the interview. All recordings and transcripts will be
kept for 5 years (Creswell & Creswell, 2018) in an encrypted folder on a personal laptop, not one
owned by the University of Southern California. This information was relayed to all interviewees
at the beginning of each interview (see appendices A and B).
I grouped the interview responses thematically and coded them to draw conclusions from
the interviewees’ voices. The narrative would then be compared with hard data (internal and
external) for context and to support conclusions. The hard data come primarily from a report
completed in the summer of 2021 intended for the program’s 5-year review that compiled GPA
and employment data for Cohorts VI, VII and VIII of the MBV program (the graduating classes
of 2019, 2020, and 2021) and analyzed those outcomes across a number of independent
variables, especially demographic markers, such as gender, race, and ethnicity and the distinct
factors of military rank, time in service and branch of service (Bogle & Lorscheider, 2021).
This approach is similar to the approach used by Garces and Cogburn (2015) in their
analysis of the way “institutional actors” viewed the impact of anti-Affirmative Action
legislation on their work at the University of Michigan (Garces & Cogburn, 2015). My specific
question, like theirs, is specific to how institutional actors describe something. In my case, the
39

something is the ways in which their work is meant to support military to civilian transition, and
therefore, the question is suited to the model (Agee, 2009). The process of grouping and coding
responses is supported (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016) as a methodology for quantifying this type of
qualitative data.
Participants
The study participants are the “institutional actors” (Garces & Cogburn, 2015, p. 838)
who shed light in providing information toward my research questions: those who have played a
role in the design, implementation, assessment, and operations of the program. Additionally, the
members of this population had a hand in shaping and evolving my questions as the research
progressed, an important technique in this type of qualitative study (Agee, 2009).
The study population was chosen by first gaining knowledge of the full size and scope of
the MBV program team, including volunteers, faculty, staff, and alumni, utilizing web resources
and due to my own proximity to the program and knowledge of its key actors. These include
individuals like the current and former faculty directors, the program director, and the assistant
director. A key volunteer who assisted in the MBV program’s career development efforts and a
member of the adjunct faculty who sits on the admissions committee and is an alum of the
program rounded out the pool of interviewees. Four of these individuals are veterans themselves,
and of these, two are also MBV program alumni, meaning the voice of veterans and program
alumni is present among the research participants in the way their positionalities intersect in their
professional work.
Due to my pre-existing relationship with the study population, several individuals were
already aware of my study and their inclusion in the population prior to being approached for
40

interviews. Every member of the study population was free to opt out of the study and either
deny participation or terminate participation at any time. Participants were not compensated.
Data Analysis
Upon completing the interviews and transcriptions, I compiled and coded the data
according to the conceptual and theoretical framework at use here, namely utilizing
Schlossberg’s (1981, 1984) 4-S model and Bandura’s (1977) four sources of self-efficacy.
Specifically, responses were viewed with a lens of how the response fits within these two models
and grouped accordingly. This allowed me to understand the intent behind the MBV’s supportive
structures, the team’s administration of the program, and how closely that intent aligns with
prevailing theories on transition and self-efficacy.
Ethical Considerations
Having recently served as a key member of the program team and, thus, being part of the
study population, my personal biases and positionality could also have come into play, especially
in the framing and analysis of the qualitative data. At the time of this study, I was no longer
employed by the program or the university. I did not report to anyone in the study population,
and no member of that population reported to me. However, I was cognizant of my bias toward
the program and my previous working and personal relationships with the members of the study
population. In a related issue, I could not protect the anonymity of the interviewees because the
sample population is limited, and everyone in their organization knows who works in the
program. Anyone can easily find the faculty and staff information via the program website.
Pursuant to this, as noted previously, study participants could decline to participate or terminate
their participation at any time. Prior to interviewing, I emailed each participant an information
sheet (Appendix E), which clarified that their anonymity could not be completely protected.
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Limitations
Since I studied a specific program at a specific institution, I and others cannot know how
the policies and structure of the MBV program would be adapted to fit another institution or
program or support a different population of veterans. While this may be the case, I used my
expertise and the literature to support inferences to draw conclusions and make suggestions that
could apply to similar programs.
Given that many of the members of the study’s population are themselves practitioners in
higher education and transition and likely familiar with the theories and concepts that form the
framework for this dissertation, I presented the conclusions to select interviewees for member
checking, an important technique for confirming the reliability of findings from interview-based
research (Creswell & Creswell, 2018; Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Since the members of the
research pool are the educational and career services practitioners whose intentionality I sought
to uncover and whose narratives and knowledge were the source of my findings, member
checking was an important way to ensure the reliability, validity, and integrity of this work.
Document Analysis: MBV Internal Student Demographic and Outcome Data
As noted above, the MBV program has collected data over the years for program
assessment and review, internal and external reporting, and internal assessment and
improvement. As part of my role, I personally collected, compiled, and analyzed much of that
data over the past 4 years, especially that relating to career attainment and progress.
The MBV program data can be organized into essentially three categories. First is the
demographic data, most of which is collected by the University during the application and
admissions process. Certain veteran or military-specific pieces of data are also collected during
this process, including branch(es) of service, time in service, and highest military rank held. This
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information is compiled for each cohort into an Excel spreadsheet known as a COGNOS report
and accompanies highly personal information like name, address, phone number, and other
identifying information privileged to MBV staff. This report would only be referred to in this
work to support claims regarding aggregated demographic data. Similarly, the second category—
academic outcomes, such as final semester grades and GPA—are saved in Excel spreadsheets
along with student-identifying information.
As the former career developer for the program, I had the third category of MBV data,
which covers student engagement with non-mandatory career development activities and
employment outcomes for each cohort. The data collection methods have evolved but largely
consisted of periodic online surveys on Qualtrics or Survey Monkey, distributed to students
using email, Slack, and other means. The survey data were then compiled into Excel
spreadsheets, coded for easy sorting, and used for reporting and to guide career development
efforts. These surveys, or versions of them, were distributed three times per academic year: at the
outset of the program (or even pre-entry) in July, in early November as the fall semester came to
an end, and in April as students prepared to graduate in May. In the first version, students are not
asked about their present employment status, their goals or plans for the semester, or topics and
industries of interest. Subsequent editions ask about changes in employment status and ask to
rate the utility of career development events and instruction while continuing to ask the same
questions regarding goals, plans, and career interests. Changes in employment status are tracked
over the year and then manually updated during the 6 months after graduation, which allows
employment figures to be tracked for that period. These data form the basis of assertions that
more than 92% of MBV graduates are employed within 6 months of graduation and support
other assertions about the program’s career development success.
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In 2021, the program director and I used all three categories of data to compile a report
for the Marshall School’s 5-year review and assessment. Career and academic outcomes were
paired with demographic data, including the military-specific data, to gain a full picture of
MBV’s success or lack thereof in facilitating transition, measured by academic performance and
career achievement. Career achievement was not defined by a hard quantitative measure, like
salary dollars, as the MBV program does not routinely collect salary information, but with a 4-
point scale meant to replicate a GPA scale based on actual outcomes compared to student-
reported goals collected by the regular career development surveys. The program director and I
both independently graded each student’s career achievement for Cohorts VI, VII and VIII,
based on reported goals and compared our grading to reduce individual bias. The result was a
GPA score for career success that could be aggregated alongside independent variables such as
race, gender, time in service, and highest rank achieved. This report was then presented to the
associate dean of graduate career services (a Navy veteran) and the two senior associate directors
of graduate career services (one an Air Force veteran) to compare notes with other graduate
programs at the Marshall School. They agreed that the data collection, reporting methods, and
findings were consistent with what was done in other Marshall graduate programs.
Conclusion
The regular career development surveys and the results of the larger student success
survey form the basis of a major assumption in this study, that the MBV program is effective in
assisting student veterans in their transition from military life to civilian life. The second
assumption, that there is an intentionality toward transition in the program’s design and
execution that interviews with staff and faculty could uncover, was largely carried by my
positionality as a long-time member of the program team but also supported by Turrill’s work. In
44

2020, Turrill published a book, a combination of his own recollections and interviews with
alumni, entitled Transitions in Leadership. Over the years, my conversations with Turrill
revealed much of his intentionality behind the class structure, cohort model, scheduling, and
many other program elements. It was while reading his book that the idea for this study began to
crystallize from vague to specific. This study explored the MBV program from the perspective of
the practitioners who operate it, exploring the intentions and the why that go into the structures,
policies, and practices in the words of those who implement them.

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Chapter Four: Findings of the Study
Six interviews were conducted with members of the study population. Of the six, five
interviews were conducted using the long-form interview instrument, with one interview
conducted using the career services-focused instrument. Three of the interviewees were current
or former members of the faculty. Two more were current members of the staff, and the other
was a key volunteer who supports the career development aspects of the program. Those
interviewed included every member of the current (as of Spring 2023) admissions committee, the
current and former academic directors, and two alumni of the program. Four of the six
participants have taught in the program, and a fifth has led multiple career seminars. Four are
military veterans. Each participant will be identified by their position and a number: Faculty
Member 1, Staff Member 1, or Volunteer 1, for example. Specific descriptions of their roles
were not essential to reporting the findings and were omitted for the sake of preserving
anonymity. Over 8 hours of interviews, recurring themes emerged and will be detailed in the
following sections to address the two research questions.
Ultimately, this research sought to unlock the intentionality of higher education
practitioners or “institutional actors” in supporting military veterans in transition, using the
programs, services and culture of a graduate program in business at a highly ranked private
research university. Using Schlossberg’s (1981, 1984) 4-S model and Bandura’s (1977)
principles of self-efficacy development as a framework, the themes that emerge in the coming
pages will demonstrate how a program team with a deep understanding of the situation and
supports aspects of transition within their core student population utilize curriculum, program
design and supportive services to help support student self-efficacy, and assist students in
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creating a greater understanding of self (the third S of the 4-S model) and developing and
executing their own strategies for transition from the military to civilian world.
Research Question 1
The first research question posed asked, “How do the staff and faculty of the Master of
Business for Veterans Program describe the intentionality of the design and administration of the
program with regards to facilitating self-efficacy for transition in military veterans?” This
question was intended to relate to Schlossberg’s (1981, 1984) transition theory, specifically the
4-S model, and how the program is designed to support veteran transition through this model or
provide the tools for self-efficacy necessary for veterans to pass through the 4-S model. To
understand their intentionality, it is paramount to understand how each actor positions their work
within the structure of Schlossberg’s 4-S model. While interviews did not describe the 4-S model
at work, questions within the interview instrument were structured with the model in mind.
Ultimately, I found that while responses varied in terms of focus areas and points of
emphasis, every interview participant detailed a high level of intentionality in the program’s
design and administration despite not necessarily being particularly familiar with the meaning of
self-efficacy in Bandura’s (1977) sense of the term. The program’s structure and curriculum, the
choice of classrooms, the management team’s operations, the admissions process, and CDP were
all described in varying ways as having a specific intent to support transitioning military
personnel in ways that connect to the development of self-efficacy and the transition through the
4-S model. Transition is deeply rooted in the program’s DNA, as is apparent when one comes to
understand the explicit and understood mission of the program.

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The Program’s Mission
To assert that the MBV’s staff, faculty and volunteers are engaged in an intentional
process of providing support for transition, it had to be established that members of that
population believe that this is the mission of the program, or at least one of the missions of the
program. To this end, one of the first questions of the interview instrument was, “How would
you describe the mission of the MBV program?” Most respondents answered using the term
“transition.” Faculty Member 1 stated that “the mission is to take highly qualified veterans …
and provide them an educational transition experience so they could take the leadership skill sets
that they have learned in the military and assist them to transition into a … civilian career.”
Faculty Member 2 stated that the mission of MBV is “to assist veterans in their transition,
especially in career services,” and then described the role of the program in supporting a
veterans’ ability to identify, prepare for and earn career opportunities on their own with the
program’s support:
They should have a basic business foundation program and adopt their resume and their
approach to their careers and jobs and translate their military career, a military resume,
and military skills and capabilities into language that can be understood by … civilian
hiring groups. … The opportunity, then, for veterans to look at what’s possible in their
own careers and meet people in these possibilities. Careers are a very important part of
that mission, I think.
Many respondents emphasized the role of MBV in helping veterans specifically make a
career transition by helping them apply their skills in new contexts or in a new language to
transition into the civilian workforce and, by extension, civilian society. Faculty Member 3
expanded on the transition mission, stating that the program can help any veteran in a transition
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point, citing her own example as someone who came to the program decades after her own
military service, looking to pivot from one civilian career to another.
When asked to define their own roles in relationship to the mission, every respondent was
ready with an answer that connected their work to the larger mission. Faculty Member 2
described the role of the team in general, defining the “champions model” that he built into the
program, in which the program’s leadership team is regularly available to students during class
weekends and visible throughout their evolution as students. One interesting response came from
Faculty Member 3, who connected her own personal story to the larger mission of MBV:
So that’s what the MBV does to you. It opens up your eyes more, and it really inspires
you to, I think, to reach your potential more than you ever thought you could. So, I think
if people actually are open to everything they hear in the program, people can grow a lot
in just 10 months.
Staff Member 2 highlighted her role in expanding the program’s social media visibility and
recruiting operations, especially where women veterans are concerned, underscoring her belief in
recruiting to the overall mission of the program. In the aggregate, the study population all see
themselves as having a role in helping students transition and of that transition aspect as central
to the program’s mission, if not the mission itself.
A document analysis of works produced by the MBV program or its constituent members
reflects this finding. The MBV’s website mentions transition twice on the first page (USC
Marshall School of Business, 2023). A report on outcomes from MBV Cohorts V, VI, and VII,
completed in 2021, highlights the transition mission in the program’s internal operations and
external reporting. While the report did track GPA and graduation data, it also examined
employment and post-graduation status outcomes, tracking them against veteran-specific
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variables like military rank held, age, and time of service (Bogle & Lorscheider, 2021). This
demonstrates the MBV staff’s dedication to understanding their transition-related outcomes and
the program’s successes and opportunities. As noted earlier, while this study did not examine the
program’s success or lack thereof, there is evidence that the program has had success in assisting
students with their transitions from military to civilian life.
From the study respondents’ statements and the documents produced by and for the
program, it is clear that the transition mission is a core mission of the MBV program, perhaps the
most salient one. This is an important context for interpreting the respondents’ statements
regarding their work and the structures and policies they created, implemented, and continue to
work with.
Understanding Transition (the 4-S Model)
Respondents were asked about veteran transition specifically and what makes it unique
from other forms of transition. This question and its follow-ups were intended to unlock the
participants’ understanding of veterans’ relationships to the four aspects of the 4-S model. While
none specifically cited Schlossberg, the interview instrument and the questions about transition
specifically were designed with the 4-S model in mind, with questions about support and self-
image connected to military transition. This allowed for responses to this line of questioning to
be specifically categorized based on aspects of the 4-S model, specifically the situation, support
and self frames.
Situation
When asked to define veteran transition, Volunteer 1 used the word “frightening,”
likening it to a divorce, which he remarked was due to the “different operating system” of the
military in contrast to the civilian world. He noted that the impact on sense of self or self-image
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was akin to a civilian retiring from the workforce altogether, noting that while civilians
experience this typically in their 60s, veterans often experienced it in their 30s or even 20s. Other
respondents noted that the transition required veterans to transform their communication styles
and behaviors to adjust more completely to civilian society. Faculty Member 3 highlighted
“vocabulary” and “emotional intelligence” as areas where veterans needed to adjust. This
apparent deficit is best described in a quote from Faculty Member 1:
Military people need to be polished a little bit in terms of communication style. [The]
military tends to be very direct for a lot of things, so we’ve had some problems with
students. They’re not problems, but just some things we’ve had to work on a little bit
more where students have been too direct in the workplace, right? And so, their
interactions with colleagues may seem to be quote/unquote “hostile” to somebody in the
civilian workplace because they are being direct, and they’re not intending to be direct.
It’s just, you know, I want an answer, and I want the answer quickly. Let’s move on.
Let’s solve the next problem. And how a lot of civilian jobs are sort of like, let’s relax a
little bit more. … We’re gonna have a meeting to have a meeting, and sometimes that
doesn’t sit well. So yeah, just polishing that.
Staff Member 1 noted that, due to the dangerous nature of military work and the
sacrifices expected of service members and their families, transition out of the military lifestyle
can be especially daunting. Faculty Member 2 echoed this sentiment, highlighting the military’s
camaraderie and service orientation:
The three things I heard that they missed mostly was camaraderie. This unit membership
issue. They missed the purpose beyond self. I think that is a tough one for a lot of
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veterans to get into the civilian business environment where service to self seems to be
the major driving focus so much of the time.
While individually addressing different aspects of the military to civilian transition and the
obstacles in it, in the aggregate, the respondents demonstrated a significant understanding of this
topic.
Support
Respondents also showed familiarity with the supports available to veterans in transition,
with two noting that thousands of veteran-serving nonprofits exist in addition to the federal
government’s and other agencies’ support. Staff Member 2 described the MBV’s volunteer
network as emblematic of the larger societal goodwill toward veterans in general: “Our students
really get that support because people want to help them.” Staff Member 2 noted the special
allowances USC makes for veterans and for the MBV program, such as never requiring
standardized testing for admission. Multiple respondents noted the size and scope of the
nonprofit complex that supports veterans, but not necessarily as a completely positive support.
Volunteer 1 noted that this could be a blessing and a curse, and Faculty Member 3 mentioned
that the mass of veteran-serving entities could be “overwhelming” and suggested that veterans
had difficulty navigating it. Faculty Member 3 shared these sentiments,
I think there’s a ton of stuff out there that they have access to whether or not they know
about it. It’s part of the challenge. So, I think, when they get involved with this, they
learn a lot more about what’s out there for them. It’s overwhelming. There’s so much
stuff out there, and [you have to] dig through it to find what you really want.
Three respondents identified the military’s YPA (now referred to as Transition GPS, but usually
referred to as TAPS in shorthand) as an insufficient resource. Staff Member 2 stated that it was
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“not extensive enough to really prepare them for what to expect,” while Staff Member 1 stated
that it was “important and necessary information, but not sufficient.” Volunteer 1 was more
critical, calling Transition GPS a “3-day course that teaches you how to fill out paperwork.” The
critique of the military’s transition programs echoed sentiments found in literature, notably the
work of Odom (2019), who stated that this program did not adequately prepare veterans to
transition to student life.
This understanding of the systems of support available to transitioning veterans, as well
as the limitations and failures of those systems, sets the tone for how this study population
develops and implements supports within the MBV program’s design and implementation that
help veterans navigate these supportive networks.
Self
When asked about the impact of this transition on veterans’ sense of self, two members of
the faculty drew a distinction between long-serving or newly discharged veterans and those who
served a single short term of service or had been out of the service for a long time. For the
former group, they agreed with the wider consensus among those who responded to the question
that their role in the military and membership in the service is deeply ingrained in their sense of
self or identity and that leaving the military can cause veterans to feel as if they are losing both
personal and professional identity. According to Volunteer 1,
I would say, in that aspect, it actually does for a lot of men and women in the civilian
sector. It does mirror the loss of identity when you retire. … One of the biggest things
that men and women coming out of the military lose is they lose that identity both from a
family perspective and a friend perspective and from a professional perspective, and I do
think that that is very similar to retiring from the civilian world. But I don’t think that
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people that move jobs during their civilian career lose an identity. … You don’t really
face what those veterans face until you’re, you know, later in your career. Most people
don’t face it until they’re in their 60s or 70s. And yet you’ve got a lot of veterans facing
that dilemma in their 20s, 30s, or 40s. And I think that’s radically different.
Faculty Member 3 also addressed the way in which personal identity was tied to military
occupation or rank: “That’s part of your identity. … You are so and so, and you are a … naval
officer or whatever you are,” while Faculty Member 2 stated that identity was tied to “having a
uniform, having rank, having medals,” as well as noting that identity in the military is less
individual and more about group identity or unit membership.
Others focused more on the way in which personal behavior and habits have been shaped
by service in the military and how that can often lead many veterans to be uncomfortable or
unsure of themselves in civilian society. Staff Member 2 noted that students often come to the
program very reserved but become “social butterflies” once they develop confidence in their
place in civilian society. Staff Member 1 noted the “engrossing” nature of a military career and
how it can lead to the creation of a new identity while also noting the highly structured social and
professional lifestyle of the military. Faculty Member 1 pointed to the fact that many who served
in the military for a long time had spent their entire adult lives inside that structure and could
find the civilian world overwhelming:
It’s their entire adulthood, and they’re in their … mid to late 30s for a lot of these people.
Now, their entire ethos, their entire life has been structured for them. Wake up, sleep, do
this, go here, etc. You know, it’s all very, very structured. Then, they come out into an
environment where there is no structure. You can choose what you want to do and where
you want to go, … and that amount of choices has been overwhelming for some. So, you
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tend to find that they start switching careers, and they jump into this, and they don’t know
what they want to do. They don’t even know what’s out there, and for many of them, it
becomes overwhelming. And, like many people, when things become overwhelming, you
kind of shut down. So, you see, … people kind of defer and delay making actions
because … they’re overwhelmed. They don’t know what to do.
In this section, the participants demonstrated an understanding of the situation of veteran
transition, the supports for veterans in transition, and the impact of the transition on the sense of
self, addressing three Ss of the 4-S model. The fourth S, strategies, along with new supports the
program created, would emerge as participants described the program’s curriculum, design, and
career development aspects.
Curriculum and Program Design
The interviewees all had significant insight into the military-to-civilian transition, even
those who were not veterans themselves. Multiple interviewees focused on the communication
style common among veterans, along with the military’s insular nature, culture, rigid structure,
and hierarchy, as key features that the MBV is designed in part to help veterans unlearn or
“polish” to effectively transition into the business world. This transition, by extension, is the
vehicle by which they could transition into civilian life.
As the interviewees described (and informed by my personal experience), the MBV
program is a 10-month, 27-unit program delivered in a cohort model via in-person instruction in
classrooms taking place every other Friday and Saturday, with 16 hours of instruction per class
weekend. Courses include core business subjects such as finance, accounting, operations,
strategy and communications, with more emphasis in coming years on quantitative courses such
as finance and accounting. The MBV program also places a special emphasis on
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entrepreneurship and leadership instruction. Almost universally, the curriculum was described by
the respondents as akin to teaching veterans a new language to enable veterans to apply their
skills, notably leadership, to civilian business careers.
When asked about the curriculum, Faculty Member 2 stated flatly that “we developed it
with the transitioning veteran in mind” and emphasized that what the curriculum is intended to
do is help the transition process. Specifically, he noted that the bulk of the transition built into
the curriculum is done in the Leadership coursework and learning how to apply military
leadership experience to the civilian world. Staff Member 1 reinforced that the mission of the
leadership curriculum was to help students adapt to the realities of civilian leadership, where the
instruction is designed to enable students to self-assess critically and build their emotional
intelligence and soft skills that should enable them to confidently lead civilians where the rigid
military rank structure does not empower them. According to Staff Member 1,
Our leadership instruction consists of self-awareness, you know, with some exercises and
self-evaluations which leads into a discussion around emotional intelligence, and a lot of
… instruction on developing emotional intelligence, which is something that we don’t
necessarily have to exercise in the military, because … it’s so hierarchical and so
mission-driven, and frankly, we could spend our whole time yelling at people to get them
to do things if we wanted to. It’s not terribly effective, but we all experience yellers
among our leaders in the military. So, self-awareness, emotional intelligence. Another
thing that I really dive into is motivation, and that’s based on the work of Edward Deci
and the book called Why We Do What We Do. I think that’s important because so many
of the aspects of motivation, or the reasons why we did the things that we do in the
military, are provided for us. They’re extrinsic. And Deci really goes into the reasons
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why it’s more effective in the civilian environment, especially … to appeal to people’s
intrinsic motivation, or to understand the intrinsic sources of the motivation of our
people.
Faculty Member 2 dove into the way in which the leadership classes were designed to facilitate
goal setting and collaboration by assigning each student a goals partner, as expressed below:
Everybody in this classroom is going to have to grow as a person to be more competent,
to be more capable to take on specific capabilities. And that was going to take personal
growth … involving every student setting goals for themselves. And then we had a fine
feature. We put individuals with a partner. They have a goals partner. That is the
structural device. … They support each other. They help each other. They hold each other
accountable. They have different experiences, so they can share those, but then help each
person reach their own personal goals, and the goals are in competency areas of
communication [and] problem solving. And I would use an emotional intelligence
framework to pick a lot of those goals.
In his interview, Faculty Member 2 connected the design of the program itself,
specifically the cohort model and the exercises in the leadership curriculum, as being part of
helping veterans actualize their best selves and connect to concepts such as emotional
intelligence. While not necessarily linked by the interviewees to Schlossberg’s (1981, 1984) or
Bandura’s (1977, 1986) theories, this description of the intent of the instruction and structure of
the program—to help students develop a deeper understanding of self through building
community and culture within a cohort—has all the hallmarks of self-efficacy building.
Specifically, creating positive psychological states while also facilitating student examination,
understanding, and development of self leads to student capacity to develop and implement
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strategies for transition. When taken in concert with the rest of the program’s business
curriculum, noted by Faculty Member 1 as providing “tools” to help them succeed in their post-
transition careers, the curriculum stands as one of the key ways in which the program utilizes
self-examination, provides support to students, assists them in developing a transition strategy,
and simultaneously builds capacity and fosters greater self-efficacy.
Research Question 2
The second research question posed by this dissertation asked, “What services, functions
and features of the program do the staff and faculty of the Master of Business for Veterans
program describe as being most relevant to building self-efficacy to navigate the transition
process for military veterans?” This was intended to specifically understand the mechanisms
through which the MBV program provides additional support for veterans in their transition
process, how those supports function, and how those supports help in the building of self-
efficacy. Bandura’s (1977) sources of self-efficacy, drawn from his social cognitive theory, were
the structural guide for organizing and understanding these responses and their significance in
understanding practitioner intentionality.
The Cohort Model
The design of the program itself, and specifically the cohort model, was reinforced by
multiple interviewees as a key feature for supporting veterans in transition and building self-
efficacy. The MBV is designed as a “closed” cohort, operating in “lockstep” (per Faculty
Member 2) in which all students are veterans and take the same classes together in the same
classrooms, usually divided into two sections that are reshuffled at the midway point of the
program. The cohort model is designed to be collaborative and deeply socially connected and has
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been engineered by the MBV team down to the details, such as which classrooms the cohorts
meet in. Faculty Member 2 stated,
A lockstep cohort, meaning everybody does the same thing. So that has a lot of
ramifications by itself. Everybody does things the same. … Management champions
model structure, … and this is even in the physical classroom. I finally moved the
program down to the first floor, where the desks are movable. … I wanted to encourage
other kinds of things to go on in the class. So, let’s get the flat classroom case rooms.
Somebody finally moved the tables for us where we could have eye contact with
everybody in the room, and we left enough walk space that the faculty could go to the
rear of the room, and we put enough white boards up that you can use white boards
everywhere. The faculty can go to the back of the room, put students up in the front of the
room to take a leadership role in presentations and other kinds of things. So, it’s more
flexible but supports greater interaction.
The program provides students with meals and career development programming, encouraging
students to spend time together between and after classes. Events built into the curriculum, such
as a ropes course, are designed to reinforce social bonds and camaraderie. Culture building is
intentional, and Staff Member 1 stated that he repeats to students that “we are all invested in each
other’s success” as a culture-building effort.
According to interviewees, each cohort’s culture building begins with the recruiting and
admissions process. Prospective students are often referred by alumni, and many attend
information sessions on the university campus where they hear from and meet current students
and alumni, share a meal with the cohort, and sometimes sit in on a lecture. The MBV
admissions committee reviews applications holistically, with a key admissions criterion being
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culture fit, as the potential for even a few students to derail a cohort is high, according to Faculty
Member 2. According to multiple admissions committee members, this is a key reason for the
program conducting live interviews rather than pre-recorded video statements. The committee
seeks to balance each cohort with representation from all service branches, both officers and
enlisted, and actively recruit women to ensure that they are represented at least in numbers
commensurate with their numbers in the military. When students are admitted, the program staff
remains in continual contact with them to ensure a smooth transition into the program, which has
resulted in what Faculty Member 2 described as a “high yield rate,” where the majority of those
admitted enroll.
A key and intentional feature of the program’s cohort model is that the staff members are
always present while students attend classes, visible and available to the students, starting in the
recruitment phase. Faculty Member 2 referred to this as the “champions model.” Every team
member participates in information sessions, stays on campus with the students throughout each
2-day class session, and is available for students throughout the day. Also, while each member
has a defined role, they operate across purposes to support the student experience. For example,
the assistant, academic, and program directors all sit on the admissions committee, along with (at
the time of this study) a faculty member who is also an alum. The career developer is
intentionally excluded from the admissions committee, according to both Faculty Member 2 and
Staff Member 1, to limit the influence of career-related considerations on admissions decisions
and prevent unwarranted bias.
While only Faculty Member 2 described this “champions model” in depth, the interview
responses in aggregate noted that these key members’ presence is a key element in the
importance of the program being brick and mortar and nurturing the cohort model. The cohort
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model has the effect of replacing the lost sense of camaraderie that many veterans experience
when leaving the military, which, according to two interviewees, it was specifically intended to
do. As Faculty Member 2 described, the cohorts are “closed,” meaning one is either in or not, but
also “inclusive,” meaning that everyone in the cohort is included in the program’s every major
aspect. It is important to note that from March 2020 until August 2022, the program moved
online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, meaning one cohort spent its entire 10 months online.
When asked about this time, Faculty Member 1 emphasized that the online cohort did gather in
person without the program staff, but Faculty Member 2 and Staff Member 1 bemoaned the lack
of connection to the USC campus, between the students, and between that cohort and program
alumni.
All interviewees identified the program’s design and cohort model as core features that
are key to the transition mission. The cohort model helps replace lost camaraderie and puts
students in a collaborative environment where they support each other and work together to
ensure that nearly all of them graduate. Aside from creating strong statistical retention and
graduation outcomes, this also helps students create mastery experiences. Students succeed in
group projects and business coursework because of this collaboration. These mastery experiences
are a core building block of self-efficacy, and the program team intentionally fosters student
success in the cohort model’s design and implementation.
Career Development
In the interest of full disclosure, I should again note that I served as the career developer
for the MBV program from August 2018 until July 2022, a fact that was known to every
interviewee and may have created some response bias. However, one of the most recurrent
responses or themes that emerged in the interviews was the emphasis on career transition as a
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key element of the program’s mission and purpose, with career services being vital to the
mission of the program. The MBV program team intentionally deploys career services in concert
with the curriculum and structure of the program to support the veteran in building self-efficacy
to navigate the transition process. While nearly all the interviewees noted the CDP as being vital,
it is not a mandatory part of the curriculum, as Volunteer 1 noted. Rather, the CDP is conducted
between or around classes, leaving the onus on the individual student to formulate their own
career development strategy and avail themselves of the available supports. The interviewees
were asked to describe the various components of CDP, and responses often aligned these
features of the CDP to Bandura’s (1977) sources of self-efficacy.
Self-Assessment: Psychological States
One of the first steps in the CDP process is for students to undertake self-assessments:
Gallup’s Clifton Strengths tool and the CareerLeader interest survey assessment. Both tools are
utilized frequently in the corporate world and are cornerstones of Volunteer 1’s work with the
students over the year. In his words,
Most people coming out of the military … transition between careers, not jobs. They
don’t know where to start. They have no idea what is possible. And so, we do [Gallup’s
Clifton] Strengths and Career Leader to start to give some basis for what they could find
really exciting in that next career. We utilize them both to show talent. … People coming
out of the military a lot of times, they view their skills as not transferable. But what we
help them do is look at their talents that help make them great at those skills, and those
talents are very transferable. And so, we use Gallup Strengths to really look at talents and
help them translate and start to think about what really makes them happy so that they
can figure out careers that would allow them to do more of that, not less of it. And then,
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Career Leader really, it looks at your ability to look at what you’re interested in, and what
you’re motivated by, to understand what possible careers could be really exciting for you.
This feature of the program strikes several key areas of the transition puzzle: it is an assessment
of self, a way of “taking stock” and addressing the “self” line item of the 4-S model. It is also a
way to help students unlock belief in their capacity for success and connect with their
psychological states, two key sources of self-efficacy development (Bandura, 1977).
The Executive Partners and Career Panels: Peer Modeling
In responding to a question about the mission of the program, Faculty Member 2 pointed
out that part of MBV’s mission was to provide career services but specified that the program
does not actually place graduates. Rather, it gives them resources to identify and pursue career
opportunities on their own, stating “the opportunity, then, [is] for veterans to look at what’s
possible in their own careers and meet people in these possibilities,” which describes how MBV
leverages peer modeling to help strengthen CDSE. The MBV employs an extensive network of
volunteers known as the MBV executive partners and hosts regular career/industry panels
featuring members of this organization as well as MBV alumni and other veterans from the
business world in which these individuals discuss their careers and their specific industries to
assembled MBV students (USC Marshall School of Business, 2022).
The executive partners also serve as mentors to individual students, another form of peer
modeling. When asked about opportunities for peer modeling specifically, many of the
respondents held up the executive partners, mentoring program and career/industry panels as
examples of this. Staff Member 1 described the centrality of modeling to the role of the veterans
and program alumni in the ranks of the executive partners and shared the following:
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It’s important for us to be able to see people that we can relate to, that we can see
ourselves yet who in whose shoes we have walked, or who might look like us? And then
we can see the success that they’ve had and the success that they generate. We can
understand and connect with the paths that they’ve taken, and … see examples of
successful business professionals. Just you know that that is what we wish to be.
In the context of Bandura’s (1986) social cognitive theory, the executive partners and the roles
they fill as guest speakers and mentors is especially important. This volunteer network surrounds
the students with opportunities to develop self-efficacy through peer modeling while
simultaneously helping students develop and refine their transition strategy.
Coaching and Mentoring: Verbal Persuasion
Verbal persuasion was another technique leveraged by the MBV program team to help
build self-efficacy in students, again most prominently in the career services areas. The career
developer was cited as a primary source of verbal persuasion in the form of coaching, with both
Staff Member 2 and Faculty Member 1 noting their constant presence with students (part of
Faculty Member 2’s “champions model” at work) and multiple informal conversations. Faculty
Member 1 cited constant contact through phone and email as additional ongoing verbal
persuasion or coaching. Faculty Member 3 identified Volunteer 1 as a key player in the verbal
persuasion of students while also referring to the mentoring offered by the MBV executive
partners. Volunteer 1 said,
For the most part, it differs a little bit based on who’s doing the coaching. But in general,
it is utilizing some of the things we teach early on in the program to utilize those and
really try to draw out the students’ ability to start to decipher what it is they really want in
that next chapter and then try to coach them to go … meet with people, learn some
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things, come back, talk to us again, give them some more tasks to go do, and some people
to talk to some things to figure out. Go, do that! Come back and talk to us again, etc., in
terms of facilitating that. Obviously, the staff people at MBV do that as part of class
weekends, spending time one-on-one, even at lunch breaks, etc. Outside of the staff, a lot
of it is done, either through LinkedIn or through the mbv.org site, which allows students
to go in and look up executive partners [to find out] what their background is, what their
history is, what industries they have experience with, etc. and then reach out directly to
them, and schedule time with them.
It should again be noted that the CDP, despite its key role, is not a mandatory part of the
MBV curriculum, and not all students participate in it to the same extent. In fact, Volunteer 1’s
final remarks of his interview centered on that topic:
And, so, that piece of the program is somewhat voluntary versus if that piece of the
program was actually integral to the program and not ancillary like it currently is. …
There will always be a little bit of under-service because I believe, if every single student
went through the [CDP] as part of MBV, whether they transitioned then or not, they
would still get value out of it.
The CDP, despite being an ancillary or non-mandatory part of the MBV curriculum, handles
much of the work of helping students develop self-efficacy, especially CDSE, to make the career
pivot that is central to their transition. The resources and attention brought to bear on this aspect
of the program highlight its role in assisting with MBV students’ transition and the intentionality
of the staff in creating and nurturing a transition-oriented experience.

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Recruiting and Admissions
As noted above, many of the interviewees regarded the recruiting and admissions process
as part of the process of building a cohort and nurturing a collaborative and inclusive culture
within that cohort. That said, questions asked specifically about the admissions process revealed
a highly intentional process that was designed specifically for transitioning military veterans,
from the recruiting practices to admissions policies, with the end goal of creating a cohort that is
diverse and collaborative and fosters self-efficacy.
The MBV program relies heavily on word-of-mouth by its alumni to sustain interest in
the program but still has a robust recruiting process that was described by many as a way in
which to inculcate potential applicants and future students into the culture of the MBV program
from the earliest phases. In-person informational sessions are a key feature in this and follow the
same champions model described above: every member of the program team is involved in the
information sessions. On-campus sessions are held during class periods, with students coming in
to answer questions from potential applicants, and potential applicants having an opportunity to
sit in on classes and share a meal with the students and staff. Faculty Member 2 described this as
a way to allow applicants to “smell the culture” of the program. Some informational sessions are
also held off campus, at or near major military facilities, though these were not described in
detail by the interview subjects. Staff Member 2 described her role in expanding the program’s
footprint on social media, which serves to advertise the program and remain in contact with
interested potential applicants and future students. She also described the program’s attention
toward attracting women veterans as the program seeks to improve their representation, a
statement reinforced by Faculty Members 1, 2 and 3.
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As of the time of this writing, the admissions committee included the program director,
the academic director, the assistant director, and a member of the faculty who is also a program
alum. All of these individuals, as well as a former member of the committee, were interviewed
for this study. Each described the admissions process in detail. The committee reviews
applications in full to decide if the applicant passes to the next round or is denied outright. Each
member described their role functionally and in terms of the committee dynamic. Faculty
Member 1 said he focuses on grades and academic readiness, while Faculty Member 2 expressed
that the committee has both “hawks and doves” to balance out those who err on the side of
admission and those who err on the side of denial. Faculty Member 3 cast herself as a hawk, a
gatekeeper who looks at candidates with a harder eye to ensure they are a fit for the program’s
culture and legacy, while all three faculty members identified Staff Member 1 as a dove who
tends to err on the side of admitting students and giving opportunities to those on the margins.
Both of these individuals are alumni of the MBV program.
Personal statements, recommendation letters, and grades are all examined as part of this
process. Test scores are not required, which is a design feature intended to make it easier for
veterans who might be overseas or otherwise engaged in their military careers and unable to
schedule exams like the GRE or GMAT. Further, two interviewees mentioned that they did not
feel that test scores adequately expressed fitness for the program. Grades are looked at closely,
per the interviewees, but not just overall GPAs. Rather, a student’s GPA is examined alongside
their performance in quantitative subjects and in consideration of the rigor of their previous
institutions. Faculty Member 1 stated that an individual with a 2.6 GPA from a service academy
with strong performance in math or engineering would be looked upon favorably despite the
relatively low GPA:
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[The] GPA is a factor, but it’s not necessarily determinative because we have a lot of
people who will come from … the service academies, and they will have 2.4s, you know,
2.6s, 2.7s, and it was because they were taking … two levels of calculus and two levels of
physics, and mechanical engineering. … And when they were taking it, if you look at the
academy levels, you know they’re taking it with drill and instruction, some with athletics.
It’s amazing that they even find time to study. And they will come into MBV, and they
will lead class discussions. And they will finish in the top quarter of the class. So, you
can’t just look at it from GPA.
Faculty Member 2 suggested that a transcript showing that an individual had attended several
undergraduate institutions in pursuit of their degree over several years would be seen as someone
who showed that they “wanted it” and looked upon favorably in admissions. Another admissions
factor is that of “3 years of military leadership experience,” which Staff Member 1 explained as
being intentionally vague to allow the candidate to explain what leadership means in his or her
own context, though in the case of officers and senior enlisted veterans, it was more obvious to
the committee.
Upon the committee’s unanimous consent, the candidates are advanced to the interview
round, where they conduct live video interviews with committee members, usually the program
director. However, during times of heavy workload, a member of the teaching faculty who is an
alum conducts some interviews. The interviews are designed to familiarize the staff with an
applicant, determine his or her motivations for applying, and ensure that the program is a fit for
them and they are a fit for it, specifically for the cohort culture. As Faculty Member 2 said,
“Anyone who could block others’ learning” would be denied admission. Since both interviewers
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are military veterans, someone who appears to be lying about or obscuring pertinent facts about
their military service would also likely not be advanced along in the process.
When the process is complete, candidates are admitted, put on a waiting list, or denied,
though members of the committee told me that most candidates who make it to the interview
stage are ultimately admitted to the program. The assistant director of the program then
maintains regular contact with admitted students, assisting them in completing the process of
enrolling and applying for the appropriate veterans benefits or financial aid and sending out
materials. In this way, again, the program experiences a very “high yield” of accepted students
ultimately attending the program (per Faculty Member 2), and all who attend the program have
an existing relationship with at least some members of the program team and faculty when they
arrive for classes. This form of continuity enhances the development of the cohort and leads
students to experience a sense of belonging that supports the psychological and emotional states
necessary to develop self-efficacy.
Conclusion
The members of the MBV program team interviewed relayed a high level of
intentionality in regard to nearly every facet of the program’s design and administration.
Beginning with a high-touch recruiting and admissions process, continuing on to the very
intentional design of a cohort model that fosters camaraderie and sense of belonging, and the
incorporation of the business curriculum and the career services process, those who run the
program from every angle are in agreement that their mission is to serve transitioning veterans,
and each aspect of the program is designed to fit that need.
The MBV program team has developed and continues to implement and adapt a program
that, cognizant of the situation veterans face in transition and the supports available to them,
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assists by helping them gain a greater understanding and actualization of themselves through
leadership instruction and career development tools. The program surrounds the veterans with a
tight cohort model that replaces a lost sense of camaraderie and improves psychological states
while also developing a culture of supportive collaboration that helps with the successful
completion of a business curriculum, allowing veterans to gain mastery experiences. A cadre of
volunteers works with the staff to provide both peer modeling and verbal encouragement through
career panels, coaching and mentoring, which also goes toward the self-efficacy necessary for
students to develop transition strategies in the form of career objectives.
While not all of those I interviewed were familiar with the term “self-efficacy” and did
not specifically refer to Schlossberg’s (1981) transition theory, the features of the MBV program
can be examined utilizing these theoretical frameworks to support the assertion that the
program’s design, curriculum, support and administrative services are all intentionally designed
and implemented to support greater self-efficacy for veterans in transition, by a program team
who understands the nature of the veteran population which they serve.

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Chapter Five: Discussion of the Findings
As described in the previous chapter, the research conducted with the target population
revealed answers to the research questions. The program's design, implementation and
administration are all described as being conducted with a high level of intentionality, purpose-
built for transitioning military veterans’ needs, with the program's core mission described as a
career-driven transition. The features most identified in supporting this transition were MBV’s
holistic admissions approach, specialized and intensive career development, and closed cohort
structure. The program’s narrow focus and very specific student demographic allow for this kind
of deep intentionality focused on the target population, but lessons learned from the example of
MBV can potentially be applied to other settings.
Limitations
The limitations of this study and of the topic of this study must first be considered before
discussion of potential suggestions or meaning for future study or practice. First, the study's
limitations must be considered: these were interviews with six individuals, all of whom are
currently or were previously members of the MBV’s core team. One recent addition to the team
(the current career developer) was not interviewed because of his newness to the program. Other
individuals not at the center of this team, like most of the teaching faculty and less frequent
volunteers, were not interviewed and may not have demonstrated the same understanding of the
program’s student population, their needs, or the intentionality of the program’s features.
Furthermore, the small study population had very limited diversity; of the six interviewees, four
present as White men and two as AAPI women.
The program itself is also one that must be understood in context. The MBV does not
purport to serve all veterans in transition, which the interviewees made clear. The MBV takes
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“highly qualified” veterans, those who have completed a bachelor’s degree already and
demonstrated the academic aptitude to continue their education at a private, highly selective, and
expensive business school. Per the interviewees, the program admits very few younger or more
junior (in terms of military rank) applicants. Not all who apply are admitted, and this work
studied the program’s specific admissions process in detail. The MBV’s student population,
therefore, is more educated, older, and more senior in rank than the average veteran leaving the
military and attending college. Therefore, while the concepts of transition and self-efficacy may
be universal, their specific application in the program under study here would not necessarily
translate to other populations of veterans.
Discussion of Findings
The first research question sought to understand the intentionality of those who were
most involved with the MBV program. These individuals included the current and former
academic directors, the program and associate directors, an operations instructor, and a career
services volunteer. Like most interview-based qualitative work, this was not an exploration of
hard facts or data insomuch as an opportunity to allow institutional actors to lend their voice to a
body of research—how they describe the program and their role within the program, and how
they perceive their own intentionality and the intent of the program and team collectively, as well
as the impact of that intentionality.
To establish a baseline, it was necessary to ensure that the interviewees all agreed that
transition was a part of the MBV program’s core mission, which all did. All six also expounded
upon transition as it applies to MBV’s core student demographic: military veterans, mostly with
about a decade of time in military service, exiting the military to pursue civilian lives and
careers. In analyzing these responses in the context of Schlossberg’s (1981) 4-S model, it became
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clear that while each of the individual subjects had their own points of emphasis on veterans and
military to civilian transition, the study population in aggregate had a clear grasp of the situation
of veteran transition, the impact of that transition on their students’ sense of self, and the
supports available for these veterans, as well as gaps in the system of supports. The strategies,
the final S in the model, would emerge as participants described the features and structures of the
program, a program designed to provide new skills and “language” to student veterans and
support them in devising a career development strategy of their own choosing.
Interviewees answered questions about the program’s elements and structures, making it
clear that its design, coursework (especially the leadership coursework), recruiting and
admissions process, and peripheral offerings like career development are all intended specifically
to address transitioning veterans’ needs and aid them in passing through the 4-S model on their
own. This is largely done using techniques designed to develop self-efficacy, according to the
principles laid out in Bandura’s (1986) social cognitive theory. While the interview subjects did
not explicitly link their work to Schlossberg’s (1981, 1984) or Bandura’s (1977, 1986) theories,
the frameworks are there and, in fact, a testament to the applicability of both models to the work
of practitioners who are not necessarily familiar with them.
The second research question addressed self-efficacy specifically, looking to unlock the
intent of the program team in helping students toward greater self-efficacy for transition,
especially career transition, which was regarded as the focal point of the larger transitional nature
of the program. While many of the interview participants were unfamiliar with the term “self-
efficacy” and the terms used by Bandura (1977) to describe its sources, the links were marked.
The program fosters self-efficacy through a variety of means, starting with the recruitment and
admissions process, continuing through the leadership instruction and career development
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offerings, and the very structure and design of the program itself, with its closed, lockstep cohort
model that is intended to create a sense of belonging while also creating opportunities for peer
modeling and verbal encouragement from peers.
The career development methods of the program were most clearly linked to Bandura’s
(1977) sources of self-efficacy. What was notable about this program is that, despite the
emphasis placed on career development and the role it plays in developing self-efficacy and
assisting students toward transition, it is, per Volunteer 1, not a mandatory part of the MBV
curriculum. And so, while many of the actors within the program noted the impact of career
development, Volunteer 1 noted that not all students seek or receive this support in the same
way. Also, it should be noted that every interviewee knew that I had previously served as the
program’s career developer, and there was likely some level of unconscious bias toward
mentioning career development, as well as my bias toward more closely regarding the career
services component of the program.
Implications
The MBV program is uniquely positioned within the world of higher education. Emory
University in Atlanta, Georgia, has now opened an MBV program, and, per interviewees, other
institutions are considering developing one. The MBV program at USC was the only such
program for the first decade of its existence and is now one of two. Other universities offer
certificate or credentialing programs for veterans, and there are transition-oriented classes for
veterans at the community college level, but no complete degree programs, especially no
graduate degree programs and most especially no graduate degree programs at high-profile
private research universities. While the Dworak-Peck School of Social Work at the University of
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Southern California has a military social work track as part of its Master of Social Work
Program, that program was not designed solely for military veterans.
While the MBV program is unique, the concept of higher education being a method for
helping veterans transition into civilian lives and employment is not. The original GI Bill of
Rights, issued immediately after World War II, made educational benefits its cornerstone, so
much so that “GI Bill” is now used by veterans and veteran-serving professionals as shorthand
for veterans’ educational benefits, despite the fact that the original GI Bill included allowances
for housing, healthcare and other benefits. The 1946 version of the GI Bill is widely credited
with transforming higher education in the United States. Higher Education, or money for it, has
remained part of the promise of military service, especially in the years after the Vietnam War,
as the U.S. military has eschewed the draft in favor of an all-volunteer force, and the percentage
of Americans serving in the military has declined. In 2008, during the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, the U.S. government doubled down on this commitment, expanding the GI Bill to
include full tuition at any public school in the nation and basic allowance for housing payments.
As noted in previous chapters, despite this legacy and the generous benefits provided to
veterans who attend college, military veterans still struggle to catch up to their non-veteran peers
in terms of educational attainment and workforce participation. Veterans also struggle to
transition adequately to society in general, leading to higher instances of suicide (Kang et al.,
2015) and homelessness (Shane, 2021). The literature has noted the military’s own transition
programs by their various names as being insufficient in preparing veterans to attend college or
transition into civilian life in general (Odom, 2019). Two interviewees echoed this statement.
Therefore, in the absence of proper institutional support by the military, it falls to the civilian
sector to attempt to fill the gaps and assist veterans in transition.
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As multiple interviewees noted, thousands of nonprofit and for-profit organizations
provide support specifically to veterans. Aside from the GI Bill, many universities, state
educational boards, and other entities provide generous support for veterans in higher education,
including scholarships, on-campus student organizations, veterans resource centers, specialized
mental healthcare, and housing. Despite this, studies show that veterans still feel low levels of
connection or belonging on campus, which can hinder retention and outcomes (Durdella & Kim,
2012).
Per the interviewees, the MBV program’s structure was meant to address this lack of a
sense of belonging by providing its students with a new “unit” to gain membership into (per
Faculty Member 2). The university’s emphasis on its students, alumni, faculty, and staff all being
part of a “family” helps that cause, but the key factor is the cohort model. Per the interviewees,
notably Faculty Member 2, the model was designed to foster the type of connectivity and
interaction that supports the work of the faculty and staff. This allows students to develop self-
efficacy to undertake the movement through the 4-S model and transition to civilian employment
and society. This model should form the basis of any replication of the MBV program. However,
in and of itself, the cohort model is not intrinsically unique, and the concept of cohort-styled
education is neither rare nor understudied. What defines this program, as emerged in this study,
are the MBV program teams’ actions, attitudes, and experiences.
As emerged from the data analysis, the six interviewees who represent the core of the
MBV program’s leadership team all understand and agree that the program is of a transitional
nature, designed specifically to assist military veterans in their transition to civilian careers and,
by extension, civilian society. They participate fully in a holistic high-touch, integrated
recruitment and admissions process that considers their military backgrounds. The cohort model,
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the leadership and business curriculum, the career development offerings and the informal
culture building all support the primary transition mission, and every member of the team is
engaged in multiple areas at any given time.
This study’s findings underscore the value or effectiveness of an engaged program team
when developing and devising a program specific to any transitioning population, whether
veterans or otherwise. In the case of MBV, of the six interviewed, four were themselves
veterans, but the non-veteran members of the study population both demonstrated significant
insights into the situations facing veterans in transition. This clear understanding and empathy
toward the student population’s needs is imperative when working with vulnerable populations,
such as foster youth or justice-involved individuals.
The findings also underscore the necessity for a curriculum that fits the transition: the
MBV program is a business program intentionally, not coincidentally. As the interviewees noted,
the transition from military to civilian is, in large part, a career transition, and preparation for
civilian careers must be a central part. Also, the multi-disciplinary role of business, with courses
on concepts of leadership and organizational development, allows for transition to be weaved
into the curriculum. The wide applicability of business degrees to the labor market also
facilitates transition for the greatest number of graduates. Per the interviewees, the design of the
MBV program was integral to the business curriculum and the transition mission, with all
program functions designed around the concept of helping veterans transition utilizing business
education.
Recommendations
This study’s findings and their implications lead to recommendations for policy, practice,
and future research. On the policy front, an understanding of the admissions and recruiting
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policies of the MBV program, as detailed by the study population, suggests that institutions
interested in supporting student veterans and other similar transition groups adapt their
admissions policies to support these students. On the practice front, it became clear that the
career development practices and curricula demand that these functions be moved closer to the
core of the program’s student life. Lastly, additional research should seek to determine the
efficacy of the MBV’s policies, practices, and practitioner intentionality toward transition by
studying the students themselves. Action steps toward each of these recommendations will be
detailed below.
Recommendations for Policy
Over the interviews, the thorough and individualized nature of the MBV program’s
admissions process became clear, as well as the clear intentionality of the members of the
admissions committee (all of whom were interviewed) toward engaging in an admissions process
that considers veterans’ experiences and the barriers and challenges they face in traditional
university admissions. The MBV admissions process is labor-intensive and perhaps less
objective than more traditional admissions processes but can result in the admission of those
whom traditional processes will nearly always overlook. The MBV program, in several ways, is
enormously diverse, with less than half of all students identifying as White, more than a quarter
identifying as Hispanic or Latinx, with both Black and AAPI students representing over 10% of
MBV students and alumni (Bogle & Lorscheider, 2021). Further, more than half of MBV
students and alumni are first-generation college students (USC Marshall School of Business,
2022).
Any competitive program or institution looking to better serve veterans in its admissions
processes would be well served to recreate important elements of the MBV’s admissions
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policies. With a few action steps, such policies could be adapted to a number of situations and
create a transition-oriented admissions policy for military veterans. Indeed, many of these steps
could be used in a post-Affirmative Action environment to ensure diversity, equity and inclusion
continue across institutions and programs entirely.
The first step in developing a more holistic admissions policy for veterans is to create a
veterans admissions committee/program-specific admissions committee. A committee that is
focused on admissions for veterans should include veterans and those who regularly work with
veterans, as well as faculty members who understand the rigors and content of program or
university curriculum. In this way, the committee is composed of both individuals who
understand the composition of a military career and its relationship to academic aptitude, as well
as individuals who are familiar with higher education, traditional admissions, and how to read
“between the lines” of transcripts and resumes. This step is labor-consuming and cannot
necessarily be applied to all institutions or situations, especially undergraduate admissions at
large public universities. This is a step most suited to specific programs or majors. Veterans,
however, represent a small portion of applicants to 4-year schools, so a committee specifically
for their admissions as 1st-year or transfer students could feasibly be developed if not otherwise
out of compliance with state or other regulations.
Another key action step for such a policy is to remove hard GPA limits for admission. As
participants described, a hard GPA floor can create an unnecessary barrier for a student who may
have aptitude in key areas while lacking aptitude in less critical ones or who may have
experienced a life challenge during their previous academic career. Understanding the rigor of a
military academy or an aviation-focused engineering school can also help contextualize a lower
GPA. This may also apply if the veteran applicant has not previously attended college, as high
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school GPA means very little for someone now more than 4 years removed from high school
who may have completed very technical military occupational training in the interim. While state
laws, educational codes, or other regulatory considerations restrict some institutions, many
private or less tightly restricted institutions can implement this step in conjunction with an
admissions committee that can examine applicants holistically.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, institutions should waive requirements for
standardized testing in veteran admissions. The MBV program’s admissions policy has never
required this testing. Study participants noted that standardized testing can become a barrier for
veterans due to the frantic pace of military careers, the possibilities of overseas combat service,
and the often late nature of deciding to attend or return to college or graduate school. This step
became commonplace in university admissions in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020
and has remained in place for many institutions. This should be considered an essential step in
creating any holistic, equity-driven admissions policy.
Recommendations for Practice
The MBV program’s practices and its key team members were described in detail during
the research, and as a former member of the team, I had significant knowledge of these practices.
One practice area of the MBV program that emerged as a central component of the program’s
mission and the team’s intent to assist veterans in devising a transition strategy was MBV’s self-
contained CDP. For veterans leaving the military, a major component of their transition is quite
simply to find a new job or career, one suited to their needs, strengths, skills and interests. Also,
the process of career development, as practiced by MBV’s team, naturally assists veterans in
transition in developing greater self-efficacy, and the development of a career strategy naturally
results in a transition strategy.
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The first action step is to provide veteran-specific career counseling and coaching
support, ideally conducted by individuals who are familiar with veteran transition or who may
have served in the military. This can take many forms; however, it is worth considering that the
MBV program has one full-time career developer or career counselor but utilizes a volunteer
network of coaches, industry leaders, and engaged alumni and veterans to provide varied support
to its students (USC Marshall School of Business, 2022). Multiple interviewees cited the
executive partners as being key to the verbal coaching and peer modeling that help create self-
efficacy, specifically CDSE.
Next, make such a CDP, or at least elements of it, a mandatory part of the academic
program or experience. This is not something required by USC’s MBV program, which
Volunteer 1 noted as a drawback or “under-service.” In aggregate, the participants stated that
career development was essential to executing MBV’s mission of assisting veterans in transition.
This recommendation stands for the MBV program at USC as well as anyone seeking to develop
veterans programming at their institutions: career development should be a mandatory or integral
part of any transitional curriculum.
To facilitate the above step, it is worth considering how coursework could be adapted to
include career development. As Faculty Member 2 and Staff Member 1 described when
discussing MBV’s leadership curriculum, the curriculum was built around transition-oriented
topics to allow students to develop a deeper understanding of self and greater emotional
intelligence while surrounding them with support and accountability via their goals partners.
While this had not been successfully implemented at MBV as of the writing of this study, such a
practice could work to include career-oriented topics, like self-evaluations (the Clifton Strengths
and Career Leader surveys), resume building, LinkedIn utilization, and interviewing skills into
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core classes like communications, human resources, etc. In a more broad-based program for
veterans in undergraduate-level education, career development courses could be made mandatory
as “capstones” for advancement and graduation.
Recommendations for Future Research
This study was a qualitative study of practitioner intentionality, leaning heavily on
assertions and assumptions made from internal data that showed that the MBV program did have
success in assisting veterans in transition. This study was intended to examine the structures,
policies and culture around the MBV program and understand why its architects and operators
conduct things as they do. We come to conclude that the intention of these actors is to assist
veterans in their transition to civilian lives and careers, utilizing the curriculum, design and
features specific to the MBV program.
The voices that were not necessarily heard were those of the MBV program’s students
and alumni population in aggregate. While two members of this study population were
themselves alumni, a comprehensive study of MBV’s alumni has yet to be conducted externally
from the program. Turrill’s work Transitions in Leadership includes numerous long-form
testimonials from program alumni, which support Turrill’s assertions on the transformative
nature of the program, specifically its leadership curriculum. The program’s 2021 report utilized
some archival self-reporting data from surveys and graduation and grade data (Bogle &
Lorscheider, 2021). It filled in the gaps in the program team’s institutional knowledge to study
three of the then-nine existing cohorts for the purpose of internal self-evaluation and process
improvement (Bogle & Lorscheider, 2021).
A future study of MBV should include a survey instrument for mass distribution that
seeks alumni and student input on program outcomes, especially focused on sense of belonging,
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academic and career achievement, and post-graduation connection to the MBV and larger school
and university communities. An examination of the career services component, specifically the
rate of utilization and reporting on experiences, would be useful as well, though the program
team already collects much of that data. Perhaps utilizing Schlossberg’s (1981, 1984) and/or
Bandura’s (1977, 1986) frameworks and principles would help determine if the work done by the
program’s team is having its intended impact on the majority of MBV’s students and alumni. Are
the cohort model and CDP leading to greater self-efficacy in career decisions? Are students
feeling empowered to navigate their transition and devise strategies to complete their transition
from military to civilian? Is there a significant portion of the alumni population for whom,
perhaps, the programs’ transition focus was unnecessary or ineffective? Such a study would be
useful both in a larger academic sense to understand the efficacy of such a program and the
intentions of its primary actors, as well as to allow the MBV team and other nascent MBV and
transitional program teams to see where opportunities for improvement or new strategies may lie.
Such a study may be difficult to conduct. Veterans are a heavily studied population and,
as such, can be resistant to it, and survey bias may lead to greater response levels from those for
whom the program worked very well or very poorly, with the voices of those in the middle going
unheard. The MBV program staff is very protective of its students, not wishing to expose them to
constant study. Nonetheless, a well-designed study conducted by a researcher with good rapport
with the program’s team and alumni could offset those issues, and a comprehensive body of data
could be uncovered to assist in taking the lessons learned from the MBV program and applying
them to serving veterans and other transitional populations throughout the educational sphere.

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Conclusions
Higher education is a people-based effort. Students are people, people with their own
needs, skills, strengths, experiences, and intent. The same can be said for faculty, staff and
volunteers in institutions of higher education, who bring their own needs, strengths, experiences
and intent into their work of supporting this student population. Leadership in this environment
requires a leader to design an organization that suits their team’s composition, meets the
students’ needs, and fits the requirements of accreditation, government and institutional policies,
and the culture and tradition of the education field. Leaders must also present a clear vision,
build a culture, and ensure that their teams buy in and work together to accomplish that mission.
Paramount in that effort is ensuring that all team members work toward the same mission and
agree on what that mission actually is.
As the team’s core members explained, the example of its team is not just one of
exemplary program design, policy implementation, and transition support. The story that
emerged from the interview data is one of an integrated and connected program team where all
are of a similar mind regarding the core mission. Also, all are committed to the task of helping
veterans transition using the curriculum and structure of an advanced degree in business. The
interviewees, alongside student workers and other volunteers, work across functions and
disciplines to continually help veterans gain self-efficacy, actualize their best selves, utilize their
supports, and devise strategies to transition from military lives and careers into civilian ones. The
structures, methods and policies that make this possible are in place because of the intentional
effort of the program’s architects to create and empower a team engaged in the mission and in
every facet of the program’s operations.
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The primary takeaway from this study is that the MBV team is highly intentional in their
actions and work because the team was designed that way, and that intentionality is constantly
reinforced. The program might not have the same impact without this intentionality toward
transition. While the program’s impact has not been fully measured, the limited data that exists
suggests a success story, which at least one other institution is now attempting to replicate. As
practitioners and educational leaders look to build programs that serve veterans and others in
transition, the intentionality with which they approach this work is paramount.

85

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USC Marshall School of Business. (2022). MBV program brochure.
USC Marshall School of Business. (2023). Master of Business for Veterans (MBV).
https://www.marshall.usc.edu/programs/graduate-programs/specialized-masters/master-
of-business-for-veterans
U.S. Department of Defense. (2020). 2020 demographics profile.
https://download.militaryonesource.mil/12038/MOS/Reports/2020-demographics-
report.pdf
U.S. Department of Education. (2022). Centers of excellence for veteran success.
https://www2.ed.gov/programs/cevss/index.html
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. (2011). Combat veteran eligibility.
https://www.va.gov/healthbenefits/assets/documents/publications/ib-10-
438_combat_veteran_eligibility.pdf
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. (2022a). Montgomery GI Bill active duty.
https://www.va.gov/education/about-gi-bill-benefits/montgomery-active-duty/
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. (2022b). Post 9/11 GI Bill (Chapter 33).
https://www.va.gov/education/about-gi-bill-benefits/post-9-11/
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. (2022c). Yellow Ribbon Program.
https://www.va.gov/education/about-gi-bill-benefits/post-9-11/yellow-ribbon-program/
Williams-Klotz, D. N. & Gansemer-Topf, A.M. (2017) Military-connected student academic
success at 4-year institutions: A multi-institution study. Journal of College Student
Development, 58(7), 967–982. https://doi.org/10.1353/csd.2017.0078
94

Young, S. (2017). Veterans’ adjustment to college: Construction and validation of a scale.
Journal of Veterans Studies, 2(2), 13–25. https://doi.org/10.21061/jvs.13
Zoli, C., Maury, R., & Fay, D. (2015). Missing perspectives: Servicemembers’ transition from
service to civilian life — data-driven research to enact the promise of the post-9/11 GI
Bill. Institute for Veterans & Military Families, Syracuse University.

95

Appendix A: Interview Protocol, Long Form
The underlying conceptual framework in play is that the MBV program design is tailored
to military veterans needs’ in their transition to civilian life, and that the MBV’s staff and faculty
team understands and anticipates these needs in their day-to-day decision-making and strategic
planning. Some of the specific theoretical concepts at play are
● Schlossberg’s transition theory, specifically the four Ss
● Bandura’s social cognitive theory and the concept of self-efficacy, along with the
derivative social cognitive career theory, especially the concept of career decision
self-efficacy (CDSE)
Introduction
Thank you for taking the time to meet with me today and participate in this interview. As
discussed previously, this interview should take roughly 90 minutes, is that alright with you?
This interview is part of dissertation research for the EdD in Educational Leadership program at
USC Rossier, on the topic of veteran transition with the Master of Business for Veterans program
as a research focus.
As I mentioned previously, this interview and your individual responses can be kept
confidential at your request. All recordings, transcripts and notes from this interview were kept
password-protected on a personal laptop (not a USC issued laptop) and will be deleted after 3
years. Also, if you are in a supervisory role, please know that survey responses of any of your
subordinate faculty/staff will not be disclosed to you for any reason. Due to the small scope of
the research study, however, the researcher will be unable to completely protect your anonymity,
pursuant to the consent form you completed. I would like to record this interview for ease of
transcription later, do I have your permission to audio record?
96

Setting the Stage
I’d like to start by asking you some background questions about you.
1. First, tell me about your background in higher education.
● How did you become interested in the field of education?
● How long have you worked in the field?
● What roles or positions have you held?
● How long have you worked/did you work at the USC Marshall School of
Business?
2. What experience do you have with the military and veterans?
● Are you a military veteran or serving in the military?
● Is someone close to you a military veteran or serving in the military?
● Have you worked with veterans in settings outside of the MBV program?
3. What would you say is the mission of the Master of Business for Veterans program?
How does your role align with that mission?
4. How would you describe military to civilian transition?
● What makes the mil to civ transition unique, how is the situation different
from other types of transitions?
● What unique obstacles do veterans face in their transition?
● What unique supports do veterans have access to during their transition?
● How does veteran transition affect the sense of self or self-identity of military
veterans?

97

Heart of the Interview
Program Structure/Curriculum Delivery
I’d like to start by asking you about the importance of the delivery model in the MBV
program.
1. How would you describe the structure or model of the MBV program?
● What benefits and challenges are presented in this model?
● How is the existing model supportive of transitioning military personnel?
● How could the model be improved to better support transition?
2. Can you share more about the student experience and lessons learned during the
COVID pandemic when the program was moved to an online format?
3. How would you describe the importance of the cohort model to the mission of the
MBV program? What is the benefit, if any, to transitioning veteran students of the
cohort model of MBV? (RQ2)
4. In what ways does the academic coursework of MBV advance the mission of the
program?
● What are the differences in academic coursework between MBV and the first
year of the EMBA or PM MBA programs?
● In what ways does the academic coursework of MBV not serve to support
veteran transition, and how can it be improved?
5. How would you describe the role that the coursework plays in preparing veterans for
civilian careers? (RQ2)
6. Describe the leadership coursework of the MBV program, and the role it plays in
supporting veteran transition? (RQ1/2)
98

Career Development Questions
Now I’d like to ask you some questions about the career development program within
MBV.
1. How would you describe the career development process for the MBV program?
● What is the ultimate goal of career development for MBV? (RQ1)
● What role does career change play in overall transition for military veterans?
(RQ2)
2. What purpose does each step in the process play? (RQ2)
● What is the intent of asking students to complete strengths and interests
surveys at the beginning of the school year? (RQ1)
● What purpose does mentorship serve for transitioning military leaders? (RQ2)
● What is the role of the MBV Executive Partners? (RQ2)
● What is the function of the career and industry panels? (RQ1)
3. How does the career development program help develop career decision self-efficacy
in MBV students? (RQ1/2)
● Can you speak to the program’s goals of creating mastery experiences for
students?
● Can you describe any opportunities for peer modeling for MBV students?
● How are MBV students verbally coached toward their career goals?
Admissions Questions
Now, I’d like to know more about MBV’s admissions process.
1. Can you describe the MBV’s admissions process?
99

● What components would you say makes the MBV’s admission process unique
or different?
● How would you describe your role within this particular process? (RQ1)
2. Can you speak to the admissions testing requirements of the MBV program? (RQ1)
How do these practices and policies support veteran transition? (RQ2)
3. Can you share with me more about the “leadership” admissions requirement and its
impact on what students are admitted into the program? (RQ1)
4. Can you share with me more about the admissions interviews process? (RQ1)
● What are some of the justifications behind live or in-person interviews versus
using pre-recorded videos in the admissions application?
● Can you share with me who serves as interviewers of the admissions
applicants and their contributions to the admissions process?
Before we conclude, do you have any questions for me?
Closing Question
What are some ways we haven’t yet discussed that the MBV program is designed and
administered with the transitioning veteran in mind?
Closing Comments:
Thank you so much for your time! It’s been a pleasure hearing about the intent behind
what you do in the MBV program, and you’ve provided a lot of very valuable insights for my
research. I look forward to sharing the final product with you and continuing our work together.
Post-interview Summary and Reflection
Note to researcher: Add notes on thoughts post-interview.

100

Appendix B: Interview Protocol, Career Development
The underlying conceptual framework in play is that the MBV program design is tailored
to military veterans’ needs in their transition to civilian life, and that the MBV’s staff and faculty
team understands and anticipates these needs in their day-to-day decision-making and strategic
planning. Some of the specific theoretical concepts at play are
● Schlossberg’s transition theory, specifically the four Ss
● Bandura’s social cognitive theory and the concept of self-efficacy, along with the
derivative social cognitive career theory, especially the concept of career decision
self-efficacy (CDSE)
Introduction
Thank you for taking the time to meet with me today and participate in this interview. As
discussed previously, this interview should take roughly an hour. Is that alright with you?
This interview is part of dissertation research for the EdD in Educational Leadership program at
USC Rossier, on the topic of veteran transition with the Master of Business for Veterans program
as a research focus.
As I mentioned previously, this interview and your individual responses can be kept
confidential at your request. All recordings, transcripts and notes from this interview will be kept
password-protected on a personal laptop (not a USC-issued laptop) and will be deleted after 3
years. Also, if you are in a supervisory role, please know that survey responses of any of your
subordinate faculty/staff will not be disclosed to you for any reason. Due to the small scope of
the research study, however, the researcher will be unable to completely protect your anonymity,
pursuant to the consent form you completed. I would like to record this interview for ease of
transcription later, do I have your permission to audio record?
101

Setting the Stage
I’d like to start by asking you some background questions about you.
1. First, tell me about your background in higher education.
● How did you become interested in the field of education?
● How long have you worked in the field?
● What roles or positions have you held?
● How long have you worked/did you work at the USC Marshall School of
Business?
2. What experience do you have with the military and veterans?
● Are you a military veteran or serving in the military?
● Is someone close to you a military veteran or serving in the military?
● Have you worked with veterans in settings outside of the MBV program?
3. What would you say is the mission of the Master of Business for Veterans program?
How does your role align with that mission?
4. How would you describe military to civilian transition?
● What makes the mil to civ transition unique, how is the situation different
from other types of transitions?
● What unique obstacles do veterans face in their transition?
● What unique supports do veterans have access to during their transition?
● How does veteran transition affect the sense of self or self-identity of military
veterans?

102

Heart of the Interview: Career Development Questions
Now I’d like to ask you some questions about the career development program within
MBV.
1. How would you describe the career development process for the MBV program?
● What is the ultimate goal of career development for MBV? (RQ1)
● What role does career change play in overall transition for military veterans?
(RQ2)
2. What purpose does each step in the process play? (RQ2)
● What is the intent of asking students to complete strengths and interests
surveys at the beginning of the school year? (RQ1)
● What purpose does mentorship serve for transitioning military leaders? (RQ2)
● What is the role of the MBV Executive Partners? (RQ2)
● What is the function of the career and industry panels? (RQ1)
3. How does the career development program help develop career decision self-efficacy
in MBV students? (RQ1/2)
● Can you describe the career development process and speak to the program’s
goals of creating mastery experiences for students?
● Can you describe any opportunities for social modeling for MBV students?
● How are MBV students verbally coached toward their career goals?
Before we conclude, do you have any questions for me?

103

Closing Question
What are some ways we haven’t yet discussed that the MBV program is designed and
administered with the transitioning veteran in mind?
Closing Comments
Thank you so much for your time! It’s been a pleasure hearing about the intent behind
what you do in the MBV program, and you’ve provided a lot of very valuable insights for my
research. I look forward to sharing the final product with you and continuing our work together.
Post-interview Summary and Reflection
Note to researcher: Add notes on thoughts post-interview.

104

Appendix C: Information Sheet for Exempt Research
STUDY TITLE: Intent to Transition: A Qualitative Study of Practitioner Intentionality in a
Graduate Business Program for Military Veterans
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR: Matthew Lorscheider
FACULTY ADVISOR: Dr. Sheila Banuelos, Ed.D.
You are invited to participate in a research study. Your participation is voluntary. This document
explains information about this study. You should ask questions about anything that is unclear to
you.
PURPOSE
The purpose of this study is to understand the intentionality with which faculty and staff of a
graduate business program for veterans approach their role in supporting transition and their
view of the best practices for supporting military to civilian transition in higher education. We
hope to learn how this program helps individuals in transition from the military. You are invited
as a possible participant because of your experience supporting the study program.
PARTICIPANT INVOLVEMENT
If you decide to take part, you will be asked to participate in an interview of between 45 and 90
minutes in length, in person, with the researcher, who will record the interview (audio only) for
purposes of later transcription and reference.
105

In the event that you feel unsafe with in-person participation, or such participation is not feasible
for you or the researcher, the interview can be conducted on Zoom or another video conferencing
platform, with cameras turned off, but audio recorded and automatic transcriptions turned on.
At a later date, you may be contacted by the researcher to review their findings from the study
and conduct a “member check,” or give your feedback on the reliability, validity and accuracy of
the findings.
PAYMENT/COMPENSATION FOR PARTICIPATION
There is no payment or compensation for participation in this study.
CONFIDENTIALITY
The members of the research team and the University of Southern California Institutional
Review Board (IRB) may access the data. The IRB reviews and monitors research studies to
protect the rights and welfare of research subjects.
When the results of the research are published or discussed in conferences, no identifiable
information will be used.
Interview recordings and transcripts along with all notes and correspondence will be kept
secured in a password-protected encrypted folder on the researcher’s personal laptop computer.
This information will be saved for 5 years from the date of creation (per APA standards) and will
then be deleted.

106

INVESTIGATOR CONTACT INFORMATION
If you have any questions about this study, please contact Matthew Lorscheider at
lorschei@usc.edu or (562)212-9636.
IRB CONTACT INFORMATION
If you have any questions about your rights as a research participant, please contact the
University of Southern California Institutional Review Board at (323) 442-0114 or email
irb@usc.edu.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Lorscheider, Matthew Kilpinen (author)

Core Title Intent to transition: practicioner intentionality in supporting veteran transition in a graduate business program

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Educational Leadership

Degree Conferral Date 2023-08

Publication Date 07/26/2023

Defense Date 07/10/2023

Publisher University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag 4-S,Bandura,business,Military,OAI-PMH Harvest,Schlossberg,self-efficacy,social cognitive theory,transition,transition theory,Veterans

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Banuelos, Sheila (committee chair), Daichendt, Alyson (committee member), Phillips, Jennifer (committee member)

Creator Email lorschei@usc.edu,mlorsch@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC113290643

Unique identifier UC113290643

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Legacy Identifier etd-Lorscheide-12154

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Lorscheider, Matthew Kilpinen

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Type texts

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