By Mike Mather, mike.mather@virginia.edu
When Haley Champion graduated high school, she didn’t think college was for her. At least not immediately.
“I wanted to go on an adventure,” she said. So, she joined the U.S. Navy, became a corpsman, and served five years before exiting. But her husband was still stationed at Camp Lejeune, NC, so she enrolled in a nearby community college.
There, she heard about a program to help veterans like her consider loftier academic goals. She asked a college counselor to look at her credentials.
“‘Is this feasible? Be honest with me,’” Champion recalled asking. “He said yes, and I said, ‘That’s all I need. I’ll do the rest.’”
U.S. Navy veteran Haley Champion, now a Princeton University student, listens to Vice Provost for Academic Outreach Louis Nelson describe UVA’s history. Champion worked with UVA student veterans to bring the Ivy League Veterans Council spring conference to Charlottesville. (Photo by Mike Mather, University Communications)
Now, Champion is a neuroscience student at Princeton University. She leads the Ivy League Veterans Council, which supports student veterans at the nation’s most prestigious colleges.
She partnered with UVA student veterans Mike Rose (A&S ’26) and Romeo Sarmiento (McIntire ’25) to bring the group’s spring conference to UVA last month.
For Rose, a Navy veteran, and Sarmiento, who served in the Marine Corps, landing the conference checked off a goal they set more than a year ago. But that, in turn, was built on their first goal: gaining UVA admittance to the Ivy League Veterans Council.
“I couldn’t help but think about what I can continue to do while I am here, and it was the same feeling that I got when I was coming up on the end of my contract in the Marine Corps,” Sarmiento, who graduates this month, said. “It wasn’t about ‘dropping the pack’ or so they called it. It was about serving until your very last day.”
The council is a resource for veterans at Ivy League institutions – Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University – but it also includes other top-flight schools like Stanford University, the University of Chicago, and William & Mary.
And now, thanks to Rose and Sarmiento, UVA is included.
Last month, UVA hosted more than 40 of the Ivy League group’s members for a daylong conference. Part of the purpose was to show off UVA’s commitment to veterans or, as Rose puts it, why “UVA is the best university on the planet.” But the main agenda was to share best practices and “create a permanent student veteran presence across these top institutions,” Sarmiento said.
The conference built on Rose and Sarmiento’s plans to make UVA more welcoming to veterans and active-duty service members, and to encourage UVA’s student veterans to continue contributing on Grounds.
Rose and Sarmiento work in the Veteran Student Center in Newcomb Hall. Both said it’s critical for colleges and universities to provide a dedicated space for student veterans, as UVA has done. (Photo by Lathan Goumas, University Communications)
“It falls in line with ‘the great and the good,’ and the idea of service,” Rose said, referencing UVA President Jim Ryan’s charge for UVA to be both a “Great and Good” university. “What we are trying to do is give back to the University by demonstrating and showcasing what the University has to offer to our peers.”
The pair’s focus is for veterans in all colleges to build a network that will benefit them after graduation. That begins with convincing prospective student veterans to understand the value of a UVA degree and the UVA experience.
“I think for service members in the commonwealth, the University of Virginia is a place for veterans, and it can very much be a place to be both a service member and a scholar,” Sarmiento said.
Even though military recruiters often tout the education benefit, nationally veterans make up about 5% of colleges’ student bodies. Among the Ivies and other top-tier schools, the number is below 1%.
Members of the Ivy League Veterans Council listen during Nelson’s architectural tour of the Academic Village. About 40 of the council’s members attended a conference on Grounds last month. (Photo by Mike Mather, University Communications)
To flip that trend, in 2018 UVA released the “Cornerstone Report,” a blueprint for recruiting more veterans to Grounds. Back then, there were just a handful of student veterans on Grounds. By following the report’s guidance, Sarmiento and Rose said, UVA has steadily improved the experience for student veterans. Last year, U.S. News & World Report ranked UVA as the #8 best college for veterans.
Now, there are nearly 300 veterans in UVA’s student body, including graduate, medical, and law students.
For military members looking ahead to college, Rose and Sarmiento stress the benefits of a well-respected and academically rigorous school, like UVA, and the post-graduation networks it provides.
“When you get to UVA, there’s a good chance it’s going to look a lot different than what you’re used to, and in some cases, you’re going to feel like you may not belong here,” Rose, a third-year Physics major, said. “And what we’re trying to do is send the message that you do belong here. It is challenging, it is going to be hard, but it is worthwhile.”
This story was originally published on UVA Today May 1, 2025.
