March 15, 2017

Anthropology major Gretchen Klingler awarded Ohio State University Veteran and Military Student of the Year Award

Anthropology major Gretchen Klingler was awarded the first ever Ohio State University Veteran and Military Student of the Year Award on Saturday, February 18th, 2017 at the inaugural Ohio State Military Ball. She was selected for this award based on her commitment to the Ohio State Student Veteran community, her academic achievements, and her passion for outreach to both student veterans and the immigrant and refugee communities.

During her time in the Air Force, Gretchen served 6 years as a Career Enlisted Aviator and was a Tactical Systems Operator, providing information on Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance targets from airborne assets. She was deployed twice in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, once to Afghanistan (2013) and once to Djibouti & Iraq (2014). She accrued over 300 combat flight hours during my time in the military. She also learned the Iraqi dialect of Arabic at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA and was fortunate to be able to function as a translator in addition to her "day job", securing supplies and building connections between her unit and local contract workers.

Gretchen Klingler outside of the Coliseum

As an Air Force Veteran and President of Vets 4 Vets (Ohio State's chapter of Student Veterans of America), Gretchen focuses a significant amount of energy on ensuring that Ohio State military and veteran students are welcomed into our community and have a fluid transition out of the military and into college life. Being mostly non-traditional students, living off campus and having had vastly different life experiences than the general student population, sometimes it is difficult for veteran students to relate to and fit into the traditional college atmosphere. For that reason, Vets 4 Vets works to involve this group of students in activities that both get veterans active in our own community and involved in the Ohio State campus and Columbus at large. They hold biweekly meetings discussing campus events, local events, social gatherings, volunteer options and career building opportunities, and often host local businesses, non-profits and national corporations to provide a wide range of information to student veterans. Under Gretchen's leadership, Vets 4 Vets active membership has tripled in the last academic year.

She is not shy in letting people know that her purpose for joining the military was to find a way to get back to college, specifically to Ohio State to study Anthropology. As a double major in Anthropology and Arabic, with a minor in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies (WGSS), She is also active in the Undergraduate Anthropology Club (UAC), serving as Secretary. She will be attending the Expeditions Ethnographic Field School in Malta this summer, and hopes to conduct research regarding refugees and the cultural perceptions of irregular migration. Additionally, Gretchen just received a research grant through the Global Mobility Project to fully fund her undergraduate research, mentored by Dr. Cohen, on Iraqi women in the United States. Her goal is to learn about how Iraqi women adjust to their lives in the United States, how they manage language barriers, and how they respond to increasing xenophobia, cultural expectations, and religious misconceptions as they work to adapt to American culture. Upon completion, she plans to present posters at conferences such as the Denman, AAA, and SfAA and hopes to publish the results of both of her research projects.

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