The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs suspended a University work-study program until at least August 2026 after auditing it in May, according to an email sent to a former student worker June 16. The audit followed the termination of several positions months earlier in the spring semester.
Prior to the spring semester, the University employed over a dozen students in VA work-study, some of whom were veterans. Students worked at two approved sites: the satellite VA clinic on campus and the Office of Veteran and Military Affairs. The program’s suspension followed the termination of student workers at the clinic months earlier.
In the email, Andrew Newby, director of the veterans office, wrote that the University would “reevaluate” with VA in a year and said he couldn’t discuss specifics.
“Once we receive further guidance from VA, more information will be shared with the VMA community; we aren’t able to speak to anything at this time outside of confirmation that the program is currently suspended (hence the lack of information going out right now),” said the email reply.
In an interview, Vice President for Student Life Steven Hood, said that, in partnership with the department, all work-study positions were eliminated at both locations due to a need to “ensure compliance with all VA regulations.” He added that the clinic work site was closed in “January or February,” while positions at the veterans office were suspended May 2, when students’ spring contracts were already set to end.
Newby deferred a request for comment to UA Strategic Communications.
“The VMA Clinic remains open for normal operations offering VA services provided by VA employees, but it will no longer support work-study positions for UA students,” Alex House, assistant director of communications for the University, said in an email statement. “We are working in cooperation with the VA to strengthen our work-study program structure while complying with all policies and procedures.”
House did not respond to a follow-up request for comment in time for publication asking whether the program suspension only applied to positions at the veterans office or whether it also included the clinic positions that had been terminated months earlier.
Student workers said that when removing these positions, the University did not formally notify them or provided little to no information about why their positions were terminated.
Students not told about position termination
The student Newby emailed, Megan Torok, a rising senior studying public relations, had worked in the veterans office since she was a sophomore before hearing from a coworker that work-study positions there would be suspended. She then emailed Newby for clarification.
“There was never any official correspondence that I’ve seen telling us that the positions have been suspended,” Torok said, adding she would have liked for the University to have told student workers. “I would have gone back to school thinking that I could have gotten this job back, and I would have had no clue if it hadn’t been told to me.”
Months earlier, Alivia Hancock, who graduated in May with a bachelor’s degree in psychology, lost her position at the clinic after having worked there since her freshman year.
When she returned to the clinic in January, she had submitted an application to VA to continue being a student worker, and waited to receive back a time sheet used to track her hours worked and a work study agreement to sign. But the time sheet and agreement never came.
Hancock said she called the University’s veterans office, which oversaw the work-study program, asking if she still had a job, but a student employee she spoke to didn’t know how to answer her question. She then called the office and asked to speak with Newby, leaving her number and asking that he return her call, though she said he never did.
“No one would answer us on whether we had a job or not,” Hancock said, as other students also were unsure of whether they had a job. “For most of us, that’s how we paid our rent and that kind of stuff.”
After her coworkers received termination emails from VA, Hancock said she then stopped showing up to work, though she was never officially told her position was terminated or given a reason for her termination, and she hadn’t received such an email. She said that she also lost door access to the clinic and a coworker had been told not to return to work.
Other students who lost their positions before the May audit were officers in the Student Veterans Association.
Losing his position felt like “a slap in the face,” said Drew Bair, the organization’s vice president for the 2024-25 school year.
When he and other officers learned their positions were cut, they had “no clue” what was going on, though he was told VA was reviewing the work-study program even at the beginning of the spring semester, Bair said. “We were asking questions, and we kind of just got the run around, but we never really got a for sure answer.”
He said that University employees shared with all student workers in the VMA office the “compliance-related concerns that needed to be addressed,” though he was unsure whether all students at the clinic had been told why they were removed from their positions. He said that he personally had told SVA officers why their positions were removed.
The University’s statement provided by House did not specifically answer a question of whether the veterans office told every student of their positions’ termination.
Staff at the office communicated with students and families to address concerns as it underwent “improvements and necessary changes” over the past academic year to meet students’ best interests while adhering to UA and VA rules and laws, she said.
Noncompliance with VA regulations
Hood declined to specify the regulations the University’s work-study positions were not complying with, saying the University generally does not comment on personnel matters. In an email, he said he would be unable to respond in time for publication to a follow-up list of questions, including whether positions at the clinic had been terminated as a part of a VA audit that occurred before May, as Bair and other SVA officers said they were told.
When asked for comment about if and when VA audited the University’s work-study program and for confirmation that positions were ended, Gary Kunich, a VA spokesperson, said the department required privacy waivers to be signed by student sources in this story so it could “look into specifics.”
Blake Schickel, the 2024-25 SVA president, was one clinic worker who received an emailed letter from VA saying his position was terminated — his dated January 28 — though he primarily worked in the veterans office in his capacity as president.
Months later, during exam week, he was questioned by a VA employee as part of the May audit. He said the employee seemed to indicate that his position violated VA protocol, as he was required to remain at his designated work site and was not allowed to study during his work hours, as he said he had done.
“The idea was that I would work my hours in the SVA and be compensated for them,” Schickel said. “So I didn’t know really any of these regulations or rules when I accepted the job.”
Schickel said he was “stressed to the max” as SVA president, and that the organization took up essentially all of his free time, a large part of which was spent advocating for fellow student veterans.
“It ended up being an unpaid position at the end of it,” Schickel said, noting he worked most of the spring semester without compensation.
Another SVA officer, Jordan Golden, said he was interviewed by a VA employee during the audit about his work-study position.
“We were always under the impression that you could hire VA work studies to do like SVA work,” Golden said, adding that he learned from the auditors that work for the organization seemingly did not qualify.
Hood said that the University is “more than happy” to assist in helping students find other jobs on campus.
“Any changes we’ve made are for the purpose of enhancing and improving our programs and services to students,” Hood said.
Hancock, though, sees a shift in the University’s reputation with veterans, given concerns she said she and other students had about work study and other functions at the office.
“As a university that claims to be veteran friendly,” Hancock said, “they shouldn’t be allowed to claim that anymore.”
