Veteran studying at Stanford was inspired by Warrior-Scholar Project
When Oscar Mier strolls through Stanford University, he remembers the journey he took to get to where he is standing today.
In 2009, Mier said he was deployed to Afghanistan with the infantry.
"I was also a part of the humanitarian mission in 2011 when Japan was hit by the enormous tsunami," Meir said.
He was deployed to the Middle East when he was 19 years old, and once he left the military, he said he was unsure what to do next.
"I felt lost, isolated, I suffered through depression, PTSD," he said. "It was very difficult for me at the time to know how to ask for help or where to get help."
But then he discovered the Warrior-Scholar Project, a national nonprofit that helps enlisted service members and veterans pursue higher education. The program helped inspire Mier to apply to Stanford three times before finally being admitted.
As a fourth-year grad student, he has been studying symbolic systems in hopes of helping future veterans.
"Can we use neuroscience to really predict who will respond to which treatments? So, eliminating the frustrating process of trying out different treatments," Mier said. "How do we individualize mental health treatments and personalize it so not everyone is going through a general pipeline, but it's personalized to that individual?"
His story inspired one professor at Stanford.
"I was incredibly impressed with the enlisted service members and the level of responsibilities they have," Benjamin Lev, professor of physics and applied physics, told CBS News Bay Area.
Lev's father served in the air force, and Lev said he wanted to give back.
"Demystify how one gets into a four-year college and how one becomes successful in a four-year college, which is actually not so clear to many of our enlisted and veteran service members," Lev said.
It's why he decided to launch a Warrior-Scholar Project boot camp at Stanford last year.
"When they come here, we spend a week in a boot camp where we teach them how to become students at the college level, how to take notes in a lecture, how to ask questions of a professor, how to do problem sets, how to do laboratories," Lev said.
And programs like these helped push Mier to achieve his dreams.
"Don't give up, maintain that hope. And you did incredible things in the military, and you could do incredible things outside of military," Mier said.
He added that he hopes to continue working on mission-based projects in the future upon graduating from Stanford next year.
The Warrior-Scholar Project boot camp is a free program, and the next session at Stanford will be held in the summer of 2026.