The Office of Veterans Affairs hosted an induction ceremony for SALUTE, the first national academic honor society established for student veterans. SALUTE is an acronym that stands for Service, Academics, Leadership, Unity, Tribute and Excellence, which are the foundation blocks and core values of this honor society.
Fifteen Stony Brook veteran students were inducted. Although SALUTE was created in 2009, this is the first cohort of Stony Brook students inducted to this honor society.
Jane York, President of the honor society and Graduate Student Advocate, led the ceremony with a speech that reiterated the veterans’ work ethic and desire to excel. “It’s natural for me that we should have an honor society for veterans,” York said. “Veterans get the job done.”
Many student veterans enrolled at Stony Brook were academically eligible to be members of SALUTE. Of the 96 undergraduate student veterans, 52 undergraduates had completed at least 12 credit hours and held a cumulative grade point average of at least 3.0, with more than 50% of those students maintaining GPAs at 3.5 or higher. This speaks to the academic discipline that student veterans have.
Stony Brook University joins the ranks of more than 200 chapters of SALUTE throughout the United States in recognizing the accomplishments made by student veterans. To do this, inductees were required to clearly demonstrate the SALUTE ideals of Service, Academics, Leadership, Unity, Tribute and Excellence.
SALUTE Inductees
Jose Arango
Paavankumar Avasatthi
Travis Curtis
Daniel Deland
Guoqi Feng
Afton Hughes
Kelvin Leung
Carolyn Levy
Katarina Norte
Alex Pisanello
Alex Safran
Anca Schneider
Eric Szillus
Paul Willms
Jane York
Congratulations to all the inductees! We are so proud of these incredible Seawolves!!