When Cole Keehner was young, he spent time with his father in University of Idaho classrooms as he worked on his degree in wildlife. Now a student himself, Keehner is graduating in May.
“When I was six years old, I moved with my dad, my mother and my younger brother to Moscow. We actually lived in family housing here on campus,” Keehner said. “I loved the town here. I loved growing up here. I got to walk around campus when I was really young, and I fell in love with this school.”
When Keehner was 12, he moved to Port Angeles, Washington, with his family. While most of his friends from school ended up studying at Washington universities such as University of Washington, Keehner kept coming back to his time at the University of Idaho.
After graduating high school, Keehner came back to UI and studied International Studies (IS) with an emphasis on international relations. A member of multiple on campus organizations including his fraternity Phi Kappa Tau and a delegation of Model UN, Keehner is also part of the Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program.
“I kept circling back to the University of Idaho, the only problem was it was difficult for me to pay for it,” Keehner said. “So, I looked into a bunch of different stuff. I always wanted to go into the army as a little kid and I always wanted to go to college. I had a couple wonderful instructors at my high school tell me about the ROTC program.”
ROTC is a program through US military branches in which the military pays for schooling and in return individuals in the program serve the same amount of time in the military. Through ROTC, Keehner has had all four years of his undergraduate degree paid for.
As part of the ROTC program, Keehner has gotten to experience lots, including his participation in the Cultural Understanding and Leadership Program in Bulgaria. While in Bulgaria, Keehner and his peers went on cultural excursions while also participating in military training.
“For military training, we did some training with their naval mid-shipmen, their future officer corps, and their naval academy,” Keehner said. “We got to learn more about how foreign navies work, particularly the Bulgarian one.”
As part of their training, Keehner and the other members performed team building exercises and physical training with the Bulgarian naval academy.
“It really impacted my study abroad experience,” Keehner said. “Being an IS major, you have to study abroad for at least a semester. My time in Bulgaria was my first time living on my own. I was still with the Army, but I got some more experience being in a different place.”
After graduation Keehner plans to join the military as a second lieutenant — a junior officer military rank — and work for a minimum of four years, though Keehner states he would consider staying longer.
Keehner said the most important thing he learned through his time at UI was the importance of people and the relationships you have with them.
“To me, people are everything,” Keehner said. “It’s not about money or about status. To me it’s really about people and your relationship with the people around you.”
“I don’t want to say that my time at U of I has been this big grand adventure that was all so fun, getting to go snap pictures of German castles for my Instagram,” Keehner said. “There’s been a lot of hard times. When you’re able to lean on the people around you or be there for them to lean on you was the most important thing I’ve learned.”
Brianna Finnegan can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @BriannaFinnega8