COTC Veteran Student Stories

Whether military and Veteran students are pursuing a new career, advancing a current career, or simply want to expand upon their education, they have found great success at COTC. Read about some of the experiences our military and student Veterans are pursuing.

Sydney Palur

From being a dual-enrollment student at C-TEC and Central Ohio Technical College (COTC) to being an employee at Salas O’Brien in Granville, Ohio, an Army reservist and COTC engineering technology student, Sydney Palur is doing what she loves thanks to COTC.

After being a dual-enrollment student, earning her Architecture and Engineering Design Certificate from C-TEC and 16 credits from COTC toward a college degree, Palur thought going to a four-year university known for engineering would be the right path. While she was in high school, her mother was diagnosed with a rare tumor that made it impossible for her parents to be a source of help for her education. Palur joined the U.S. Army Reserves to pay for her attendance at the University of Louisville, but quickly realized after one semester that it was not monetarily feasible to continue her education there.

“So, after going through all my military training, and finally, getting into the reserves, I decided to go back to school. But this time, I was going to start at a technical school, thinking that it would be affordable, and I would get a better education with smaller classes,” said Palur. “I went back to COTC because I already had credits and I already knew the college and some of the engineering professors. I fell in love with the program, the professors, the people and how students are just so involved.”

Palur has found that the campus atmosphere is exactly what she needs. Her professors have taken a keen interest in her career goals and ways to help her reach them. She has also found out how COTC professors are willing to go the extra mile to ensure that students receive the support they need to succeed in and out of the classroom. 

An internship completed while a dual-enrollment student and connections through her COTC professors led Palur to her current role as a CAD drafter at Salas O’Brien in Granville, Ohio. She feels right at home at Salas O’Brien because the company frequently hires COTC graduates, and she is working with several of them.

Palur has less than a year on her contract with the Army Reserves. If she reenlists, she will be promoted to a non-commissioned officer role that is more of a leadership position than what she now fulfills. Palur plans to graduate from COTC in 2022 with her Associate of Applied Science in Engineering Technology. Her long-term plans include pursuing her bachelor’s degree in engineering and becoming a commissioned officer in the Army.

“Without my military experiences, education as a dual-enrollment at C-TEC and COTC and on-the-job opportunities, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”

Megan Connell-Cox

When Megan Connell-Cox joined the U.S. Navy at 21, she was trying to run away from a life of problems that wasn’t working for her anymore, but she was also unknowingly running toward a life with direction filled by her true purpose and passion. 

“I wasn’t happy with my life at that point. I wasn’t happy with where I was living or where I saw my life was heading,” she said. Connell-Cox’s life had been punctuated by traumatic events that left their mark on her and caused her to turn to drugs and alcohol. She enlisted as an aviation ordnanceman in Jan. 2001.

“When I was 21, belonging to the military didn’t mean to me what it means to me today,” she said. In late summer of 2002, Connell-Cox was injured when loading a MK-82 500 lb. (inert) bomb. After being discharged from the military, the long list of medications prescribed to her because of her injuries became crutches for addiction. Earlier life trauma and military experiences also caused post-traumatic stress (PTS).

Connell-Cox’s sobriety has led her to her true purpose and passion in life: social work. She enrolled in Central Ohio Technical College’s human services program in 2017. “I honestly believe that the last two years as a student learning the professional side of helping those with issues that I have dealt with and still do has really shown me that social work is the correct career path for me,” she said.

George Clark

George Clark isn’t your typical cadet in Central Ohio Technical College’s Peace Officer Basic Training (POBT) academy. This 46-year-old army veteran just completed the academy as part of the law enforcement technology degree program and is awaiting the state peace officer examination this month.

Clark was a combat medic in the U.S. Army from 2008 to 2014. He was stationed in Italy with two deployments to Afghanistan where he received two combat medic badges. Once his service was complete, George was left with a void to fill. That’s when he discovered COTC.

“I met Commander Sowards. I was really impressed that the commander of the program was willing to sit down and answer any questions that I had. I had a lot of hard questions — why I would want to go to your academy, what’s great about your instructors — and he had a lot of really great answers,” said Clark. He enrolled in autumn 2017. The instructors have exceeded Clark’s expectations. “They’re truly teachers. They treat you with respect.

Enrolling at COTC was seamless, said Clark. He thought using his G.I. Bill benefits would be difficult, a commonly held belief by veterans. He found that the opposite was true, but he has faced other challenges: the academic challenge of going back to school after more than 20 years; the physical challenge of fitness tests required for Ohio peace officers; the social challenge of relating to students half his age. He had to learn how to be a student, something he learned from his classmates.

“I’m learning about myself through this program. I don’t want it to be over. It’s fun,” said Clark when considering graduation. “I’m looking forward to the achievement because it wasn’t a sure thing.”

Suzanne Smith

Whether Suzanne Smith is traveling the globe working on communications and navigation for the U.S. Air Force, keeping busy raising a family or attending classes to become a registered nurse, Smith is a self-dubbed “do-er,” and she’s found her fit at Central Ohio Technical College.

Born and raised in California, Smith enlisted in the Air Force after high school with an aim to “travel and see the world,” she says. “I’ve always loved aircraft and I basically just like being challenged. So, I went and read the book at the recruiter’s office about all the jobs that are in the Air Force and I picked the one I wanted.” 

That job — in the field known as avionics — took Smith everywhere from North Dakota to Alabama to Portugal to Germany over the course of her six-year military career. When she and her husband returned to civilian life after his retirement from the military, the couple and their two sons settled in central Ohio; that’s when Smith discovered COTC.