The University of Missouri–St. Louis Veterans Center kicked off its annual Student Veterans Week programming with Pizza with the Provost, an event for student veterans to enjoy a slice with Provost and Interim Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Steven Berberich (center left) as well as Joshua Evans, Veteran’s Center coordinator/VA certifying official.

The event returned in-person this year for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic explained Veterans Center worker Nick Heckman, a College of Business Administration student who served in the United States Marine Corps.

“We have events such as these that get student veterans together and create a community because, as you may well know, student veterans tend to show up older, more mature, more life experience and kind of feel separate from the other students,” he said. “We try to do this to get veterans to come together and get to know each other and meet people. Then we had a lot of regular students come in, and people were talking to them.”

This photograph was taken by UMSL photographer August Jennewein and is the latest to be featured in Eye on UMSL.