New tool allows college student parents to compare resources across campuses
Tayla Easterla entered the Cal Poly campus in San Luis Obispo about three years ago with one thing on her mind: She needed to get her college degree so she could better provide for herself and her young daughter.
As she worked towards her bachelor’s in business administration, the university helped her find housing and a spot at the childcare center on campus. When her daughter got older, however, Easterla struggled to secure similar services that catered to her child’s age-group.
Had she had more information on what resources were available on campus for someone like her, Easterla said, it could have affected which school she decided to go to.
Now, a new tool has landed on the internet that allows current and prospective student parents to compare resources available to them at college and university campuses across California all in one place.
“As student parents, we experience time poverty,” Easterla said. “This tool takes a lot of the extra heavy lifting off of our shoulders.”
Using The California Student Parent Resource Hub, parenting students can check if campuses offer on-campus childcare, family-friendly study spaces, food pantries and academic support. They can also verify if schools have in place the resources that the law requires them to provide, such as a webpage with information for student parents and designated lactation spaces on campus.
Students can find detailed information about specific campuses, compare colleges by viewing their resource profiles side-by-side and search for campuses that provide the resources they are specifically interested in. The database also collates information on progress made by the California Community Colleges, California State University and University of California systems in providing legally required resources and highlights schools with particularly good programs.
The data shows, for example, that UC Davis has 19 of the 20 resources for student parents the tool checks for. Only transportation support — discounted transit passes, preferred parking or carpool programs, for example — could not be confirmed at its campus. At UC Berkeley three resources — family-friendly syllabus guidance, student parent groups and events designed for parenting students — either do not exist or could not be confirmed.
The California Alliance for Student Parent Success released the new Student Parent Resource Hub Tuesday. The alliance is led by two research and advocacy organizations, California Competes: Higher Education for a Stronger Economy and EdTrust-West.
“We hope this tool connects student parents with what they need to achieve their dreams,” said Melissa Valenzuela-Stookey, director of research at EdTrust-West and creator of the tool. “They are highly motivated, highly capable individuals and we think it’s unacceptable that they might feel they have to choose between being a parent and getting their diploma. What frequently stands in their way is lack of access to stable housing or basic needs like food. Campuses can and should provide resources to meet those needs. We hope this tool allows student parents to get the information they need, and that it lights a fire that pushes campuses in the direction of progress.”
On realizing that several of California’s roughly 300,000 undergraduate student parents were not aware of the resources available to them at public campuses, Valenzuela-Stookey’s team set out two years ago to build a solution. They aimed to create a tool that would increase transparency and save students from having to “go down rabbit holes and click on 10 different webpages to find what should be really simple information,” she said.
The team collected information from student parents about the resources they needed information about and what they would benefit most from. They then scanned every school’s website and reached out to them to collect the required information. A major priority for them was getting the design right since the project’s goal was to respond to student needs, Valenzuela-Stookey said.
While they plan to do a full refresh of the data annually, they also hope to collect updates from campuses on a rolling basis to keep the information as current as possible, she said.
The Student Parent Resource Hub is on the California Alliance for Student Parent Success’s website.
