The Oakland University Senate, a legislative body comprised of faculty teachers from all departments and deans of campus colleges, assembled in Gold Rooms A and B on Thursday, Sept. 23, for their first meeting of the semester.

The meeting addressed a key informational item, the Oakland University Military Transfer Policy (OUMTP).

“Being a military friendly school is a testament to the intuitional commitment we have made to our veterans and their dependents,” said Steven Shablin, OU registrar.

The OUMTP ensures four hours of undesignated free-elective credit to those students who have completed more than one year of continuous active duty in the armed forces or the United States upon application.

The university admitted 240 veterans for the Fall 2010 semester, and three-quarters have registered for classes.

“Oakland has been named, again, a Military Friendly school for 2011 by GI Jobs Magazine,” Shablin said. “It only gives designation to about 15 percent of all colleges and universities in the United States.”

Michael Brennan, a senior majoring in anthropology,

attended the meeting and was pleased with OU’s status as a Military Friendly school.

“I’ve been working on a committee with a couple of the members of the senate and the registrar,” Brennan said. “We were planning to put a proposal together to institute it (the OUMTP) and then we found out the senate had already passed a similar proposal in 1973.”

Brennan served in the U.S. Army for six years, completing two tours in Iraq.

The policy acknowledges course work completed in the U.S. including the United States Armed Forces Institute.

To get credit, the content of courses must be comparable to those OU normally grants transfer credit. The American Council on Education must recommend the course work, and the head of the appropriate academic unit at OU must approve the granting of transfer credit.

“For a lot of veterans, they have taken courses that are very closely oriented to what they want to do for the rest of their life,” Brennan said. “The courses may not mirror, but are very similar to courses that we offer in some subjects here at Oakland.”