ESU Graduate receives national award

Tristen Wendland

Tristen Wendland, 2000 Emporia State University graduate from the Mental Health Counseling program, is this year’s National Vocational Rehabilitation Counselor of the year for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Born and raised in Olpe, she earned an undergraduate and graduate degrees at ESU. After graduation, Wendland and her husband, who was on active duty in the Army, moved to Germany.

During their three years in Germany she worked as a Drug and Alcohol Counselor.  Wendland and her husband have returned to the United States and are now stationed at Fort Carson, Colorado.

In 2004, she began working for the Department of Veterans Affairs as a Vocational Rehabilitation Counselor. In May of last year she was asked to coordinate a new program called Coming Home to Work. This program was designed to help injured service members who are still on active duty find a job and the employment training needed before returning home.

“This program was started at Walter Reed in Washington shortly after the first wave of severely injured service members returned from Iraq and Afghanistan,” Wendland said. “It was started to provide transferable skills, employment training and possible job placement while they are being medically boarded out of the military.”

After seeing the success of the program at Walter Reed, VA began to look nationwide at the military treatment facilities where the largest groups of injured service members were returning to. Fort Carson was one of nine additional sites chosen to host the Coming Home to Work program.

Wendland finds the work that she does with the program to be very rewarding not only professionally, but personally as well.

“During the initial process, my husband, a West Pont [graduate], was deployed for his second tour of duty to Iraq,” she said. “Consequently he is still there. This made the job that much more important to me. To feel that I was in some way able to help the service members that in some cases have been out there with my spouse has been an amazing opportunity. It puts things in perspective and motivates me to want to help all that much more.”

In August, Wendland will travel to San Diego to receive the National Vocational Rehabilitation Counselor of the Year Award. She feels that the award is not only a personal achievement, but a great tribute to the team effort that she and her colleagues put into the program.

“It really takes teamwork to make the entire process successful,” Wendland said. “What this award means for me personally is that what I do does make a difference. When an injured service member comes into my office, I think, ‘that is someone’s spouse, father, mother, brother, sister, son, or daughter.’”

Had she not received the quality education that she received at ESU, Wendland said she would not have been able to achieve what she has achieved in the short time since she has graduated.

“Without my degree and training that I received at ESU, I would not have been able to get the job with the VA,” she said. “The education I received in both my undergraduate and graduate degree program have been instrumental in setting me up for success.”

Last Updated August 27, 2007>