From the September 2010 issue of Our Moment, the UConn Foundation's e-newsletter.
Disabled U.S. Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, including Brookfield resident Mike Zacchea, who suffered a traumatic brain injury in Iraq, are returning home to few opportunities. Starting a business is considered far-fetched. But UConn’s new Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities promises a chance at success.
Zacchea, an MBA student, is the Connecticut face of the EBV at UConn’s Stamford campus. The School of Business is the newest member of this innovative program, which includes a group of five internationally prominent business schools, in collaboration with the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University.
Zacchea was wounded during the second battle of Fallujah when he was hit by a blast from a rocket-propelled grenade. “The negative spiral of joblessness and homelessness is happening much faster in this generation of vets than in previous generations,” says Zacchea, a well-known advocate for veterans. “So there is a real need to give these veterans the tools they need to become successes.”
UConn’s first class of entrepreneurial veterans will attend classes on campus starting September 18, and will graduate September 25 with much of the pomp and circumstance benefiting UConn graduates. The UConn Honor Guard will escort graduates, and a seat will be reserved to honor all servicemen who did not return from duty.
Bill Simon ’81 , the newly named Walmart U.S. president and CEO , is the featured speaker for the commencement, which will be held at 6 p.m. at the Hartford Downtown Marriott. Simon is a retired officer from the U.S. Navy and Navy reserves after 25 years of service.
The bootcamp is free to eligible veterans, and is being offered at UConn, Syracuse, UCLA, Purdue, Florida State and Texas A&M University. It consists of a 45-day online course prior to residency, a nine-day residency at the selected school, and a 12-month mentoring program following graduation. The program is unique in terms of population served, the consortium of schools involved, and the funding, which derives from private rather than government sources.
According to government statistics, 20 percent of veterans with a service-connected disability are unemployed, a number more than twice as high as the current U.S. unemployment rate. The EBV strives to change that by providing career training, education and job creation for disabled U.S. veterans.
“It’s gratifying to see how excited the vets are about starting their businesses, which represent a whole new chapter of their lives,” says Kathleen Dechant, the program’s director and a professor of management at the School of Business. “Despite their disabilities, they are determined to do what it takes to launch their ventures. They spend every possible moment at the bootcamp working on their business plans.”
The bootcamp already has a record of success: Since Syracuse founded the program in 2007, more than 200 veterans have completed it. Eighteen months after the first class graduated, 65 percent had successfully launched new ventures, 11 percent were employed in industries relevant to areas in which they planned to start a business, and 11 percent returned to school full-time. In 2009, the U.S. Army named the EBV as a national “best practice” for programs serving soldiers and their families.
More information about the UConn’s Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities is available at http://www.business.uconn.edu/scope/ebv.html. Those interested in contributing to support veterans outreach in the School of Business may send checks made out to the UConn Foundation, with veterans outreach inscribed in the memo line, to the UConn Foundation, 2390 Alumni Drive, U-3206, Storrs, CT 06269 or visit http://www.friends.uconn.edu/veteransoutreach.
