Derek Blumke, a six-year active duty Air Force veteran deployed three times to Afghanistan who is now an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, said that many of his classmates just don’t understand that asking him if he has killed anyone in combat is “not an appropriate question.”

Blumke, who founded the group Student Veterans of America, said the transition from the battlefield to college campus is a tough and under-addressed issue. Student veterans often find themselves the oldest one in the classroom, and with experiences to which their classmates cannot relate. Many of Blumke’s peers at the University of Michigan just “don’t understand what [veterans] have gone through.”

Blumke, shown at right, and others are working with colleges across the country to address student veteran needs as schools gear up for a new wave of veterans to fill their classrooms, who will have their tuition covered by the new, Post 9/11 GI Bill, slated to kick in Aug. 1.