SMU Recognizes Student Veterans
SMU honored MilVets executive director, Navy veteran and accounting senior Conner McCarthy with the SMU Outstanding Student Veteran Leadership Award this week.
MilVets is an organization for student veterans at SMU started in 2011. The award was presented during SMU’s Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility Veterans Day event Nov. 12.
The Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics & Public Responsibility and SMU Mothers’ and Dads’ Club hosted the ninth-annual free, family-friendly Veterans Day lunch.
“I’m just really grateful for everything I went through in the military. I got a lot of exposure to good, honestly great, leadership styles, and some pretty bad leadership styles as well… the military did give me discipline… the same duty to serve that was the same reason I was in the military was also the reason I started becoming an officer for the SMU MilVets,” McCarthy said.
He said the MilVets help veterans with issues like confidence and fitting in on campus.
“We believe that today’s veterans are the next leaders of America’s companies, within our communities, and within our government, and it’s our responsibility to give them the best opportunities for success,” George W. Bush Institute Military Service Initiative senior program manager Major Amy Bernard said at the event.
Dean Matthew Myers of the Cox Business School conducted the annual presentation of SMU veteran lapel pins.
This year, organizers accepted donations for Liberty House, a transitional housing program for veterans living in homelessness.
This year marked the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landing.
