Bryan Bills now in the running for national Veteran of the Year-Higher Education
By JULIE CARLE
BG Independent News
Bryan Bills is quick to smile, and he has every reason to smile as he recently was named Ohio Veteran of the Year by Military Friendly.
He claims Bowling Green State University is the reason he won the award. “BGSU changed the trajectory of my life,” he said in a recent interview.
With two degrees under his belt and a third one in process, Bills wants his success to motivate other military students.
The Coldwater, Ohio, native was recruited by the Army as a junior in a vocational high school studying electronics.
“A recruiter came in and said, ‘You could do this in the Army,’” Bills recalled. “I couldn’t sign up fast enough.”
With that decision, he went through basic training at Fort Jackson, S.C., between his junior and senior years of high school when he was 17 years old.
He returned to Coldwater High School for his senior year and after graduating, he completed the Army’s job training in about six months.
Because he had electronics training in the vocational school, he didn’t have to attend some of the Army’s classes. Instead, he would teach the soldiers who needed a little extra tutoring and help.
“I probably would have received some kind of accolade for that, but I screwed up and got the Army’s equivalent of a misdemeanor and was required to go through some training. “In the end, I’m glad I learned that lesson early,” he admitted.
He enrolled at BGSU as part of the ROTC program in Spring 2014. Two weeks before the end of his first semester, he got the call: “Hey, we’re going to Afghanistan. Get your stuff and let’s go.”
All his professors were understanding and let him off the hook for the finals. ”I basically just got a handshake and a high five, and they let me go,” Bills said.
Stationed at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan for about seven months, Bills and his unit were engineers or “construction workers with guns,” he said with a smile. “We were consolidating bases—tearing down parts of them, making them smaller and fiscally responsible. We salvaged the important stuff that was high-dollar, and everything else we pushed into a hole and covered.”
After that deployment, he was home for a couple of months before being called back. The second deployment, first to Kuwait and then Kandahar, Afghanistan, was spent “building the bases back up.”
He completed some additional Army training, so he could officially be called a construction engineer. He also learned “how to talk to people, lead people and emulate what it means to be a good follower” in leadership training—which was necessary for any type of promotion in the military.
After the two deployments, he served as an Ohio Army National Guard Non-Commissioned Officer and continued his studies. During COVID, he transported COVID samples and vaccines to and from nursing homes, testing facilities and hospitals throughout northwest Ohio, and helped set up tents at prisons so the inmates had a place to go when their cells were deep cleaned.
“It took seven years, but in 2021, I graduated with my Bachelor of Science in Technology and immediately signed up to get my MBA,” Bills said.
He was supposed to start in Summer 2021 but was called up for National Guard duty again to go to the border in Tucson, Arizona, to assist Customs and Border Patrol with the high-value equipment, interagency coordination, and mentoring soldiers in leadership roles.
On-campus involvement
From the beginning at BGSU, Bills found camaraderie and community in the university’s Nontraditional and Military Services as an active-duty service member through his time in the Ohio Army National Guard. As an undergraduate student, he had utilized the office to understand and receive his GI benefits.
When Bills returned to campus after his active military service, he became active with the university’s Nontraditional and Military Student Services. As an undergraduate, he was in the office a lot, asking for help about accessing his benefits, but also using the space in between classes where he could relax and talk with others in the same situation.
The previous military coordinator noticed Bills was in the office “all the time,” and asked him if he wanted to become a peer adviser to mentor other military students who come int the office.
Bills wasn’t sure what all that entailed but decided it would be a good gig.
“I worked with a lot of students in their first semester as they were transitioning” to college life from military life.
Many of them would move on after the initial guidance, and “some other people stuck around, became your friends and then asked you to be in their weddings,” he said.
He went from being a peer adviser to a graduate assistant during his one-year, accelerated MBA program. The graduate assistantship required a higher level of professionalism.
“I had to dress up more, no more ball caps, and become more public-facing,” he said. In addition to still working one-on-one with military students, he also participated in orientations and other on-campus events and activities.
He graduated with his MBA in 2024 and immediately signed up for the Ph.D. program in leadership studies.
“I wanted to prove I was smart to those people who thought I was stupid in high school, because I was on an IEP (Individualized Education Program), and then thought I joined the military because I couldn’t do anything else.”
In the doctoral program, he took on the role of full-time military program coordinator. He described that as, “Where real life began.”
From February 2025 to March 2026, he served in that position. “It was a great opportunity. It was fun and fulfilling,” he said. “The best part was I got to give back everything that BGSU has given me.”
Today he recognizes the significance that they hired him as a student “for next to no reason other than I was a military student,” he said.
He was able to build a routine, get a paycheck, but more importantly “hang out with my people and be a part of some really important programming,” Bills said.
Though he preferred to be behind the scenes, he was often “the face of the program” on camera, in news articles.
“Being a team player is part of what being in the military is about,” he said. “But being in the spotlight might result in a military veteran on a base somewhere might see that, and you’re going to be the reason that they come to BGSU.”
Realizing the importance of promoting the program to others, he acknowledged, “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for this program.”
In March, he accepted a position in workforce development outside of the university, but he will continue working on his doctorate. He wants to show how veterans can succeed. “I want them to know that other veterans have come here and succeeded. I’m hoping that the next person that comes along after me knows it can be done.”
As the Ohio Military Veteran of the Year, Bills is now in the running for the national Military Veteran of the Year in the category of Higher Education. The public can vote for Bills by visiting the Military Friendly website at https://viqtory.us.launchpad6.com/voy-2026/entry/525.
He said the competition is more about BGSU than him. The university changed his path, but he has also “watched other lives be changed in almost every single case positively.” This is his way of paying back and providing more visibility for the university and the program that gave him a path forward.
