Alan Llavore | Office of Strategic Communication | 909-537-5007 | allavore@csusb.edu
U.S. Army veteran and student Ralph Figueroa, chapter president of CSUSB’s Student Veterans Organization (SVO), was named 2024 Student Veteran of the Year by the Student Veterans of America (SVA) during an awards ceremony at the SVA national conference in Colorado Springs.
The award, given Jan. 3, honors a student who has made a positive impact on the lives of fellow student veterans or the veteran community and who has displayed exceptional leadership qualities and a commitment to serving others, both within the student veteran community and broader society.
“It's been a whirlwind to say the least,” Figueroa said. “I think mentally I've been preparing myself for this role, and I’m ready to face all the challenges that come my way. It’s an immense responsibility, but I'm definitely ready to take it on.”
While he said he was surprised to receive the honor, he is no stranger to earning accolades. In 2022, Figueroa re-chartered the Student Veterans Organization (SVO), which had been dormant for four years, and has served as its president since then. In 2024, he was recognized by CSUSB’s Office of Student Leadership and Engagement as the Outstanding Student Club Leader, and the SVO was named Club of the Year. In October, he was selected to attend the prestigious SVA Leadership Institute in Washington, D.C., and was named an SVA Leadership Fellow.
And, while it took place weeks after the SVA conference, Figueroa was a guest of U.S. Rep. Pete Aguilar (CA-33) at the March 4 joint session of Congress. Aguilar said he invited Figueroa because of his advocacy work on behalf of veterans.
Figueroa will graduate in May with a master’s degree in Rehabilitation Counseling and is a master’s level paraprofessional at CSUSB’s Veterans Success Center (VSC). His inspiration to join the Army was two-fold.
“First, I wanted an education, and I knew my parents couldn't afford it. I'd always had the dream of getting a degree, so I empowered myself to join the military for that specific reason,” he said.
As a 10-year-old growing up in La Puente, he was directly influenced by a neighbor, Mr. Green. “He was a master sergeant in the Army, and one day he came out of his house wearing his dress green uniform. I thought, ‘Wow, this is cool. I want to have a uniform like that one day.’ He was the head of security for the school district, and he always commanded this respect,” said Figueroa said, explaining his second reason for joining the Army.
So, in 1994, as a 17-year-old junior at Bassett High School, Figueroa enrolled in a U.S. Army program called The Split Training Option that allowed him to complete basic combat training at Fort Jackson, S.C., during the summer between his junior and senior years.
“The day I came home after basic training, Mr. Green saw me, and he immediately embraced me,” Figueroa recalled. “His eyes were welling up, and he was telling me how proud he was that I joined the Army. That meant a lot to me, and it gave me a boost of confidence.”
Upon graduating from high school in 1995, Figueroa traveled immediately to Advanced Individual Training in Fort Sill, Okla.
His 12 years of military service shaped his leadership skills and discipline, from his work in field artillery, as an instructor, and while on deployments during Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. He was honorably discharged in 2006. He and his wife, Marisela, have two children, now 22 and 18, and he enjoyed a successful career as a manager and instructor in the auto body business and entertainment business.
In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, he found himself at a crossroads when he was laid off by his employer. “I had started my bachelor’s degree and never finished it, and I figured this was the time,” he said. He applied for Veterans Administration (VA) education benefits, returned to Cal Poly Pomona in the fall and finished his undergraduate degree in liberal studies.
After graduating in 2022, his VA counselor suggested he look into a master’s level program to become a veterans’ counselor.
“I didn't do this by myself. It literally took a village to help me get to this level. I was surrounded by some really great mentors, including Agustin Ramirez (director of the VSC), Priyanka Yalamanchili, (associate professor, special education: rehabilitation and counseling), Ryan Keating, professor of history and director, Office of Student Research) and Rachel Keener (student services professional, Counseling & Psychological Services)."
Ralph Figueroa
“I started doing some research, and when I looked at CSUSB’s program in rehabilitation counseling, I immediately bought in.” He began the program that fall.
“I loved how comprehensive it was in preparing counselors and training them to be ready to work with the population with disabilities,” he said. “The program included everything from understanding legislation and policies to medical aspects and understanding addiction. It’s the best decision I ever made.”
He also began working at the VSC as a veteran benefits and resource specialist paraprofessional, where today he also coordinates the Mission Ready series, which offers academic counseling, workshops and mentorships, and the weekly Veterans Round Table, which provides a space for veterans to meet and support one another as they make the transition from military life to civilian student life. He has introduced numerous initiatives, including the establishment of a food pantry and a hygiene commissary (both free to students), as well as a model telehealth program for mental health that universities throughout the country and Puerto Rico are beginning to adopt.
One of the biggest challenges to attending college as a veteran–and one that he himself experienced–was imposter syndrome.
“Coming in as a nontraditional student and being older is hard,” Figueroa said. “Imposter syndrome among veterans is very high because we feel either a) that we don't belong, or b) that we may not even have the mental capacity to be here.
“We always talk about the transition out of the military, but we're beginning to talk more about how to transition back into higher education,” he continued. “What we do at the VSC is give veterans the tools and the resources that allow them to be better college students, because they already have the skill sets and they have a lot of transferrable skills.”
Time management is another crucial skill for student veterans. “As nontraditional students, we're coming with a plethora of things going on in our lives, whether it's a mortgage, a family, car payments. We may be dealing with mental health issues or physical issues caused by military service and then balancing a class load on top of it all. It really shows the resiliency of our student veterans because they are experts in all those things. Are there going to be times that they're going to need extra help in certain areas of their life? Absolutely. At the VSC, we find and provide a lot of peer support.”
His extensive community service includes a recent two-year appointment by the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors as a commissioner for the San Bernardino County Veterans Advisory Committee. He is a life-member of the Disabled American Veterans, Chapter 12, and other local veterans' organizations, and regularly volunteers as emcee for veteran-related fundraisers.
Figueroa’s immediate plan after graduation is to find full-time employment in a career field focusing on student veterans. Ultimately, he plans to apply for a doctoral program in educational administration and become a professor.
In his official role as Student Veteran of the Year, Figueroa will serve a two-year term that will involve frequent visits to the headquarters in Washington, D.C. and advocating with policy leaders on Capitol Hill on behalf of student veterans. He believes helping others is the ultimate purpose of leadership and hopes his work continues to inspire future student veterans.
“As Student Veteran of the Year, I will be advocating at the federal level as the ambassador — the name, the face, and more importantly, the voice — of all these student veterans,” he said. “This award gives me the opportunity to be in front of politicians to change those laws and policies that affect accessibility to benefits for veterans.
“I’m going to be behind these doors that I never even thought were accessible to me, this guy who grew up in La Puente, relatively poor, a man of color, a Latino,” he continued. “That, to me, is going to be empowering to other student veterans who can say, ‘Hey, that's a guy that looks like me. It's a guy that sounds like me. If he could do it, I can do it.’ That's how I'm trying to inspire others.”