Personnel center relieves stress for nonprior service students

Published June 15, 2011
By Senior Airman Eric Summers Jr.
81st Training Wing Public Affairs

KEESLER AIR FORCE BASE, Miss. -- As a new member of the military, nonprior service students may deal with a lot of stress caused by training, adapting to their new military lifestyle and many other factors. One organization on base helps these students relieve some of that stress by taking care of tasks that most military members are charged with completing themselves.

The 81st Force Support Squadron's student personnel center on the second floor of the Levitow Training Support Facility in the Triangle helps NPS students by taking care of personnel issues ranging from in-processing to updating marriage status.

The SPC functions as a one-stop shop where students can go for training reclassification, records management and swapping of assignments with other members.

The center serves from 400 to 500 students a week.

"When students fly in from basic training on Mondays, their records are sent to our office," said Airman 1st Class Jason Strassner, a customer service representative. "From there we send the records to the medical office and the dental office.

"That following Tuesday, we give them a briefing and correct any discrepancies that they may have in their records, such as a person getting married after basic training," Airman Strassner said. "We input them into the military personnel data system as being here at Keesler. We also fix rank problems, update information if students get married or have children and update their (Servicemembers Group Life Insurance.)"

The SPC also has a student assignments section with counselors that are sorted by the Air Force Specialty Codes of the students. The assignments section coordinates with military training leaders to get students assigned and outprocessed.

"We have our own security manager to handle students that need security clearances and we schedule students for weapons firing and polygraphs," said Senior Airman Sadie Barcroft, a student assignments counselor. "We also schedule them for any additional training en route to their base and make sure that family members are cleared to follow them."

The SPC even has a passport office for students and their families.

"There's almost nothing that we can't do here to outprocess our Airmen on time," said Airman 1st Class Christopher Hill, another student assignments counselor. "We are the mission -- it is about getting them in and trained. Keesler is an Air Education and Training Command base and that's what we help do."