Newly created coordinator position helps military veterans navigate path to campus
Stacey Prescott ’25 originally thought she wanted to be an astronaut. Or maybe a fighter pilot. Then, as a student at the Naval Academy in the 1990s, she discovered that high-flying aerobatics gave her motion sickness.
“So I went into helicopters,” she said recently, sitting in Fred Meyer Lounge as undergraduate students decades younger than her streamed by on the way to Starbucks.
Prescott graduated with a degree in aerospace engineering and flew Navy helicopters for seven years, including two overseas tours. Then came an extended run as a Navy Foreign Area Officer, with deployments to Singapore, Hong Kong and Indonesia.
She earned two master’s degrees, learned to speak Mandarin and developed a habit of hosting wine dinners for dignitaries and officials. At some point, she started taking wine vacations to destinations like New Zealand, South Africa and California’s Napa Valley.
“That’s where this idea of wine becoming a post-retirement gig came to mind,” Prescott said. “Everywhere I went in wine country, there was another beautiful vista. I loved the idea of actually living in one of those areas and of being a part of the industry, or something adjacent to it.”
Now a retired Navy captain, Prescott is in her first semester of the wine business leadership track in Linfield’s Master of Science in business program. She’s tapping into the GI Bill® and the Yellow Ribbon Program to help pay for tuition, housing and books.
But it wasn’t easy to navigate the Veterans Affairs Administration, and Prescott said she leaned heavily on the help of Emily Delo, Linfield’s veteran affairs/student outreach coordinator.
“I knew I didn’t want to navigate the VA and education benefits on my own,” she said. “Emily made it absolutely seamless for me.”
Delo, a child of Air Force veterans who attended college using her parents’ GI Bill benefits, is the first person to hold her position at Linfield. She’s thrilled that the university is investing not only in financial aid for veterans, but also in making it easier for them to apply and access the VA benefits they’ve earned.
“Many veterans can come here tuition-free, but it’s so ridiculously confusing to navigate the VA system or even to reach someone there to ask questions,” she said. “I have personal experience being a military brat and utilizing VA benefits to pay for college. I know what it’s like; I can help them walk through the process.”
Linfield has 44 veteran and military-affiliated students who are in contact with Delo’s office, but she believes there are others who haven’t reached out to her. She also expects the number to grow in the years ahead as Linfield leans into its status as a Yellow Ribbon school with a School Certifying Official like her to help guide them.
“For vets, it can be scary to figure all this out,” Prescott said of VA benefits. “My message to them would be to open yourself up and take the leap, find a person like Emily and a place like Linfield to help you figure out the next chapter in your life. You’ll be glad you did.”
Learn more
Find information about available veterans’ benefits and support services at linfield.edu/veterans.
