Veterans, active-duty service members, and military family members come to UNC Greensboro with different experiences and goals. UNCG helps them turn those experiences into pathways toward degrees, careers, and community—through benefits guidance, specialized academic programs, faculty training, and opportunities to connect with fellow military-affiliated Spartans. This Veterans Day and throughout Military Families Appreciation Month, UNCG is thankful for its enrolled military-affiliated students and their families.
UNCG continues to earn national recognition for serving military-affiliated students. In Military Times’ Best for Vets rankings, UNCG earns high marks again for 2026-27. UNCG was also named a Military Friendly Top Ten School for the fourth consecutive year and recognized as a Military Friendly Spouse School.
From Fall 2025 to Fall 2026, UNCG’s military-affiliated enrollment grew 7%. In Fall 2026, UNCG enrolled 480 veterans, 85 active-duty students, and around 1,300 military family dependents. That’s a total of 1,859 military-affiliated Spartans studying popular majors such as Nursing, Management, Information Systems and Supply Chain Management, Accounting and Finance, Biology, and Kinesiology.
Over a quarter of these are graduate students, 82% are 25 or older, and 65% use the G.I. Bill to help fund their education. Sixty-three percent are first-generation college students, and 38% are women.
Serving Military-Affiliated Students
Director of Military-Affiliated Services (MAS) Chris Gregory says their mission is clear. MAS coordinates services for veterans, active-duty military personnel, and their dependents; advocates for military-affiliated students; and develops community between UNCG’s military-affiliated and civilian populations.
“I always had a desire to work with this population,” he says. “We talk to them about what military educational benefits they may have earned.”
Considering that military-affiliated students at UNCG range in age from their teens to their 60s, there is no one-size-fits-all path to success.
One program that recognizes the unique experience of veterans is the UNCG School of Nursing’s Veterans Access Program (VAP) coordinated by Dr. Susan Letvak. It appeals directly to students with a military background who want a career in nursing.
Letvak herself knows the value of military experience to the nursing field. She also knows the challenges students can face.
“I was in the U.S. Navy reserves for 13 years as a nurse. What I did in the military was train the medics and the Navy corpsmen,” she says. “We look at their military experience and their credits, and then we give them a specialized pathway to becoming a registered nurse.”
Additionally, all military students at UNCG receive priority class registration, and they can join the Student Veteran Association, an active chapter of the national Student Veterans of America.
UNCG also contributes to military well-being through research. The Institute for the Convergence of Optimized Methods for Military Advances and National Defense, known as the iCOMMAND Institute, helps develop advanced materials, manufacturing solutions, and wellness training that supports troops on and off the battlefield.
UNCG faculty are “Ready to Serve”
Whether in academics or personal well-being, UNCG works to continuously improve its services for military-affiliated students.
Dr. Erin Reifsteck, chair of kinesiology, is also UNCG’s faculty fellow for student-veteran well-being. She creates opportunities for military-affiliated students to do activities together. “We’ve done some physical activity programming for the veterans, for instance,” she says. “We try to do things that are fun.”
Reifsteck also serves as a liaison between military-affiliated students and UNCG faculty.
“We’ve had a lot of opportunities to build those relationships, which has culminated most recently in developing a training specifically for faculty to better serve our student-veterans,” she says.
That training, Ready to Serve, launched this month. It’s an asynchronous online tool designed specifically for UNCG faculty to better support military-affiliated students, including active-duty service members, veterans, and members of the National Guard and Reserve. Read more about Ready to Serve.
For military-affiliated students, choosing a university means finding more than a degree program. It means finding people who understand military education benefits, recognize prior experience, and create a community where students and their families can thrive.
For more information about Military-Affiliated Services (MAS), visit military.uncg.edu
