Centurion Military Alliance brings Adult Hope Scale to St Phillips College Veteran Transition Center, San Antonio TX

On Monday, February 3rd, exactly one day after the Kansas City Chiefs won their first Superbowl in 50 years, Centurion Military Alliance President Dr. Steven Hall and Centurion Military Alliance CEO Chaunte Hall presented their veteran transition course at the St. Phillips College Veteran Transition Center, San Antonio, Texas.

The last Centurion Military Alliance (CMA) event in San Antonio Texas was held at the San Antonio Zoo, which I also attended and wrote about the three takeaways that CMA emphasizes during their one day curriculum: Educational Attainment, Financial Literacy, and Vocational Proficiency. In these three takeaways you'll get a number of briefs and presentations given by credentialed professionals from within the local community that represent companies dedicated to supporting veterans such as USAA, RBFCU, Christus Health, Grand Canyon University, DeVry, Texas Veterans Commission, IVMF, and many more.

It's important to keep the three takeaways in mind because what CMA is not, is an event where companies are marketing goods and services. These companies and credentialed professionals are supporting and emphasizing Educational Attainment, Financial Literacy, and Vocational Proficiency. They are all driven to one main point: To help YOU the veteran and YOU the military spouse in SUCCESS in your transition. RBFCU representative Glenn Errhalt made a point of this during the lunch hour by stating that this was not a competition of companies trying to win over veterans with incentives and opportunities, it's simply informing veterans of incentives and opportunities available to them to take advantage of at their choosing.

Something new to me during the CMA course was a packet of information based off something known as the Adult Hope Scale. In this packet, you use information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) to determine annual wage, education needed for entry, work experience, and on-the-job training. In addition to this, using BLS you also select a location and look at the potential job rate growth in that particular location. Then you apply the Adult Hope Scale based off three things:

How You Think About Yourself Now

The Focus on Your Life At This Moment

The Here and Now Mindset

The Adult Hope Scale is an 8 part rated scale with 1 being Definitely False to 8 being Definitely True. This scale is in the form of Positive Psychology and measures "hope". The numbers in this scale during CMA correlate with your assessment of your confidence in your ability to for example, negotiate salary, conduct research on prospective employers, build/tailor resume to highlight skill-sets. This scale is applied to each of the three takeaways of the CMA course: Educational Attainment, Financial Literacy, and Vocational Proficiency. Based off your scale assessment you can determine your level of concept progression in Level I, Level II and Level III, with III being "expert".

If you're like me, you tend to fancy yourself as Level III in pretty much all aspects of life. For example, when I'm playing guitar by myself, I consider myself a Level III, however, if I play guitar in front of an established credentialed musician, it's pretty obvious I'm well below a Level I. It's that honesty with yourself that will help CMA determine a successful pathway for you to become knowledgeable and efficient with CMA's three takeaways that in the big picture of all things transition, help YOU towards attaining YOUR transition goals.

It's the dedicated selfless service and sacrifice that Centurion Military Alliance brings to the table. It's the dedicated selfless service that supporters of Centurion Military Alliance who take time out of their busy days, at no financial gain to themselves, come out to support. It's the collaboration of veterans and veteran supporters who all want one thing in particular. They want you to be successful. The only question I have for my fellow brothers and sisters in arms, veterans and spouses of past, present, and future is: Where were you when Centurion Military Alliance came to town?

I want to personally thank Chaunte Hall and Dr. Steven Hall for providing this outstanding transition course, and I want to thank the dedicated veteran supporters who come together each and every time to make this course a success.

For more information on Centurion Military Alliance check out www.cmawarrior.org

For more information on the Good Samaritan Veterans Outreach & Transition Center at St. Phillip's College and their no-cost veteran assistance and referrals check out https://www.alamo.edu/spc/about-spc/college-offices/gsvotc/