Emporia State University celebrated military service personnel past and present with Veterans Celebration activities Saturday.
The featured speaker was retired Army Col. Laura Trinkle, an Emporia State graduate in 1991 who spent nearly 30 years in the Army before retiring last year. Her military career took her around the world.
Trinkle says she had a “fantastic experience” at ESU.
Trinkle was commissioned in 1990 and went on active duty as a medical corps officer the following year, spending her career in combat support hospitals — including deployments to Kosovo in 2002 and Iraq in 2009. She retired as the Chief of Staff for Regional Health Command in the Pacific last year. She also built on her education foundation while in the Army, earning her Master’s in Health Administration in 1998 and her Master’s in Strategic Studies in 2014. She has also been a Fellow in the American College of Healthcare Executives since 2004.
As part of the celebration Saturday, ESU also unveiled its new Student Veterans Center inside Morse Hall. The area is designed to be used by student veterans as an area for study, meetings and other gatherings.
