Photo taken during a Female Engagement Team counterinsurgency effort in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan, in support of Operation Enduring Freedom
Patrice Frede, Regional Director for HERC of the Carolinas, has been a Navy reservist for 28 years. It may not seem like a natural transition to go from being in active duty in places like Afghanistan to working in higher education, but Frede said that institutions of higher learning are actually great landing spots for veterans.
For starters, both the military and higher ed give employees the opportunity to be a part of something that’s greater than themselves and to use their skills and abilities in service to others. In both environments, the experience changes lives and gives people opportunities that they may not have otherwise been exposed to.
Frede said that a campus is also very similar to a ship or a military installation. There are a lot of self-contained services that are required, and jobs that entail the same skill sets, such as food service, postal services and mail distribution, facility management, information technology, and human resources.
And many of the skills that veterans develop during their service are useful in a higher education setting. Leadership and flexibility under pressure, or amid unexpected change, are critical, especially as institutions are navigating the current pandemic environment.
Frede has taken the almost 30 years developing leaders in the U.S. Navy, where she is currently a Master Chief Petty Officer, and translated that to her work at HERC of the Carolinas.
HERC of the Carolinas is housed at East Carolina University, one of HERC’s lead institutions. Just as Frede may have taken an unconventional path to higher ed, so have many of the ECU students who make up her employees. Their diverse backgrounds have helped make HERC of the Carolinas one of the fastest-growing regional HERCs in the country during Frede’s four years at the helm.
“ECU is a place where we really pride ourselves on preparing first-generation students or other students that may not have had the opportunities to do what ECU can help them do,” Frede said. “And I feel like the students who come to HERC have really wrapped their heads and hearts around the mission and just performed so beautifully that I’ve offered every student a review of their resume or to provide a reference, because to be quite honest if I didn’t have the students that I have and they didn’t work as hard as they did, I’m not sure that I would have made it through without them.”
Frede, who received an MBA from Cardinal Stritch University in Milwaukee, looked at how the central HERC office was structured and tried to mirror that in her regional office.
She had to staff up with work-study students because the office was just getting started and didn’t have financial resources to hire full-time employees, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Business students on federal work-study programs were eager to be part of a business that was being built from the ground up.
“Yes, it’s something for their resume,” Frede said. “But it’s a big source of pride that they were able to, as students, have that much responsibility and do a job that has been that impactful.”
Frede was recalled to active duty and deployed for a fifth time on Jan. 8, and is expected to spend all of 2021 based out of Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa. After modeling skills at the HERC of the Carolinas that she learned in the military, such as adaptability and compassionate leadership, she is now seeing those same traits reflected back to her.
“The first thing you try to figure out is, ‘What am I going to do about my civilian job? How am I going to continue and keep it afloat until I get back?’” Frede said during her mobilization. “Everyone has been incredibly helpful and supportive, which is not surprising but refreshing because I really thought other people would stress out as much as I am.”
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About the Author: Harold Gutmann is the director of brand and marketing strategy at Santa Clara University. He is a longtime writer and editor who is proud to work in higher education, and encourages all job seekers to consider it.
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