Cal Poly’s Students with Dependents Program is expanding their outreach to student parents to help students access the resources they need to complete their degrees.
According to Courtney Moore, the student services coordinator and the program’s first-ever full-time employee, Students with Dependents developed a new method of identifying incoming student parents. Moore worked with the Dean of Students Joy Pedersen to include a question on a survey sent to admitted students asking if they have dependents.
If students indicate they have dependents, they receive an email that provides information about the Students with Dependents program. Moore said that about 50 incoming Cal Poly students received that email. The email goes out to all admitted student parents, regardless of whether they have accepted Cal Poly’s admission offer.
Moore said Cal Poly has about 110 students with dependents, including spring graduates. However, this number may be higher, since currently enrolled student parents must reach out to the program directly.
Moore works with assistant professor Tina Cheuk, a co-leader of the CSU Student Parent Network committee, which worked with state leaders to pass a bill offering priority registration to student parents.
Cheuk said the Students with Dependents program is taking an “informal network approach” to identify currently enrolled student parents.
“A lot of student parents have different identity markers,” Cheuk said.
Students with Dependents may be using resources provided by centers on campus such as the Multicultural Center and the Dream Center. Moore works collaboratively with other centers on campus, educating them on the Students with Dependents program, in order for these other centers to direct student parents to Moore.
Being able to identify and assist student parents is crucial to the work of the Students with Dependents program. According to their website, student parents have significantly lower retention rates despite typically achieving higher GPAs.
Despite new successes in reaching out to future student parents at Cal Poly, students with dependents face barriers like lack of childcare and housing that make it especially difficult for them to finish their degrees, Cheuk explained.
“There’s no family housing [on campus], so they all have to be commuters,” Cheuk said. She mentioned the GI bill for veterans, which used to provide family housing.
“This is a highly gendered issue,” Cheuk said. “So when men need family housing, we build it—people who came back from the war. But when women want to go back to school, or go to school, we don’t provide that for them.”
Moore mentioned the difficulty of accessing childcare at the same time classes are offered.
“The childcare on campus is a great resource, and it closes at 5:30,” she said. “So if Cal Poly is going to offer classes past 5:30, then no student parent that was utilizing that center can take those classes because they don’t have childcare.”
Moore said many classes offered from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. are GE courses, which makes it even more difficult for student parents to be able to complete their degrees.
Cheuk also described social barriers that student parents face, like feeling unseen by and isolated from their peers.
“Sometimes you feel like you’re invisible,” she said. “And sometimes you feel like no one sees you.”
The next step for Students with Dependents is developing a systematic way of identifying currently enrolled student parents and improving the resources they have access to.
Cheuk said the Student Success Center recently received a $20 million donation from philanthropists and entrepreneurs Lynda and Stewart Resnick. Students with Dependents’ goal is to create a Parent Resource Center within the new Student Success Center.
To better identify current student parents, Student with Dependents is in the process of working with the Office of the Registrar to include a questionnaire in the Cal Poly portal and require students to indicate whether they are a parent when registering for classes. A date for this change has not yet been set.
Learn more about Students with Dependents and their resources on their website.