Congressman David McKinley (R-WV) has taken it upon himself to be a voice for West Virginia University’s student veterans and their needs on Capitol Hill, and he believes he’s making significant progress.

McKinley, who serves West Virginia’s first district, visited WVU on Wednesday to stop in on the Veterans Job Fair at the Erickson Alumni Center.

It is the fourth time the congressman has made an appearance at an event related to student veterans at WVU, and the reason is simple.

“It’s just something special to me. My father flew in the war, his brother was all shot up in the Philippines, my grandmother’s brother was killed flying in World War I,” McKinley said, “and then when you serve in Congress, to see how many veterans are there and what they’ve done, the sacrifice they’ve made – we need to say ‘thank you.’”

There are currently over 1,000 student veterans enrolled at WVU, with just a few faculty members serving them.

In the fall, McKinley met with veterans to ask them what he could do on Capitol Hill to help facilitate the student veterans with services necessary to excel in their education.

On top of the veterans’ list was a center on campus dedicated to Veterans Affairs.

McKinley left the meeting saying, “Let me just try.”

Six months later, he believes a lot has happened.

“(WVU President E. Gordon) Gee has told me that they are getting close to having a room finally designated for them, and that was one of the first things,” McKinley said. “We found that to be universal. Whatever campus we were on, the vets want to take care of the vets. They want to have each other’s backs and they want to have a vet center. I think it will happen and Gordon (Gee) has assured me that he wants to do it too.”

Another item high on the veterans’ wish list was adjustments to the GI Bill. The GI Bill gives funding to veterans pursuing an academic degree.

However, the funding is limited to a certain number of months, and student veterans who have been out of school for several years often times have a hard time transitioning back to college, which forces them to go past the time limit.

In February, McKinley and Dina Titus (D-NV) re-introduced a bipartisan bill that would extend the limit on the GI Bill for veterans pursuing a degree in the STEM fields.

“We’ve done that, we’ve introduced that bill (and) it’s getting some noise now. The discussion was: 36 months is not enough,” McKinley said. “Someone that’s been out of the education for three, four, seven years in the military service, to come back and get acclimated right away – there is a transition there…If you’re a veteran (and) you go into STEM education, you’re going to get an extra year of GI Bill rights.”

Much of McKinley’s conversations with the University revolves around the STEM fields. The congressman is worried about the low number of undergraduates majoring in the fields in the U.S., and he wants WVU to take more of a leadership role when it comes to this part of its curriculum.

“We’re struggling particularly in engineering under STEM because in engineering, a lot of campuses now are five years to get your degree, so I think we have to go an extra step, especially given that America’s undergraduate programs are not fully utilizing STEM,” McKinley said. “Five percent of undergraduate students in America are in STEM education; in China it’s 22 percent.”

A more specific area where McKinley believes the state of West Virginia and WVU should take more of a leadership role is when it comes to energy.

“The best way is trying to get WVU up to be more of a center of excellence around the country for people that when they think of energy, I don’t want them thinking about Penn State or Pitt or VMI or Virginia Tech, I want them thinking about WVU,” McKinley said. “Why aren’t we this center? A lot of our efforts is trying to get more research dollars into here.”

McKinley said a lot of the leading research on the issue has in fact taken place in Morgantown, but it hasn’t been utilized the right way.

“This technique they use around the country for fracking - they’ve been doing it for 40 years, this is not anything new – was developed here in Morgantown,” he said. “Because we weren’t doing it, it was being used in Oklahoma and Texas; now we’re doing it here.”