Student parents at the University of Wisconsin have access to programs and services to help them balance the challenges of parenthood with their academic endeavors, but some student parents have said they have trouble at the school.
The UW Office of Child Care and Family Resources is located in Eagle Heights and helps provide services to student parents. The OCCFR also offers early education and child care to UW students, according to its website.
Jen Dittrich-Templin, the parent resource specialist and supervisor of the Child Care Tuition Assistance Program, said the main function of OCCFR is to coordinate the campus child care system and also to provide education and support to parents.
She said OCCFR has worked for many years to try to include a question on UW applications asking if the applicant has children. That way, if the applicant does, they would be directed to her office. Dittrich-Templin said, however, OCCFR’s request has been denied multiple times.
Dittrich-Templin said many students are not parents when they enter college and it is significantly difficult to find all the student parents out there. She said her program makes the effort to get the word out despite these challenges.
“We do our best. We have a Facebook page, we have a website, and on an annual basis we hand out many brochures to as many departments and student advisors as we know of,” Dittrich-Templin said. “So anyone who is looking for child care should be able to find us.”
Day care centers are located throughout the campus and provide care for children ranging from six weeks to 12 years old. The Chicken Soup center provides care specifically for children who might not be able to attend regular day care because they are sick, according to the OCCFR website.
The OCCFR also provides financial assistance for both single parents and two-parent families. The amount each family receives is based on the income of each family, according to Dittrich-Templin.
She said CCTAP receives its funding from segregated fees allocated through the Associated Students of Madison.
“When we go to present that budget, we bring student parents with us to present their story to the student government so they understand what a student goes through and what they need as a parent and why this funding is so crucial for them,” Dittrich-Templin said.
When asked about the visibility and access of the program, Dittrich-Templin said CCTAP is completely open to anybody. The financial assistance is based on the applicant’s status as a student and their family’s income. The financial aid provided is designed to cover anywhere from a small portion to a majority of the family’s day care needs.
Financial aid is made available to students through CCTAP, and it serves about 200 students per semester, Dittrich-Templin said.
Because CCTAP is funded by student fees, as long as a student is paying segregated fees and meets certain income guidelines, they are eligible for CCTAP’s services. On average, the awards are about $1,600 per semester, Dittrich-Templin said.
This money does not entirely cover child care because full-time child care is about $250-380 per week and CCTAP only covers $100 of that, but it does help student parents significantly. Due to the aid of CCTAP, upwards of 90 percent of undergraduate student parents are able to graduate on time, Dittrich-Templin said.
“I would say that financial stress is the biggest obstacle that student parents face. That, and time management. But once a child hits five, the financial strain goes down, and the stress at home goes down, so they don’t need as much financial support for day care, and the time commitment is less,” Dittrich-Templin said.
Shari Franey, a student parent with junior status at UW, shared her experience with OCCFR and some of the setbacks she and others face as full-time students who are also parents.
She said while she was satisfied with their services overall, she felt the OCCFR could do a better job of getting its name out. Franey said there is no information present in the Student Activities Center and also felt the website is not very professional-looking.
Beyond OCCFR, Franey said while some professors have been extremely flexible if she needs to reschedule an exam or bring her daughter to class, there have been others that have not been so accommodating.
“[Some professors] will not let you reschedule exams for anything. There was a pregnant lady that had to drop the class because her due date was too close the exam. There was also a guy who stayed up all night with his wife while she was giving birth, and he still had to take the exam the next day,” Franey said.
Even when accommodations are made for parents, one student said she feels she is perceived by other students as getting preferential treatment.
Miriah Barger, a senior at UW, said she does not like that other students feel she receives special treatment when she is still completing the same work.
Another disadvantage to being a student parent, Barger said, is missing out on parts of her daughter’s life. She has missed some of the milestones such as walking, crawling and talking.
While she said she did like the OCCFR as a program, Barger said it did have some shortcomings.
“One thing they could do better is reach out to underrepresented groups. A lot of undergraduate Latinas that I know that do have children or are going to have children had no idea what this program was,” Barger said.
Franey also expressed how helpful CCTAP and OCCFR have been for her and her family. She said they have done a lot of things for her and both have made going to school a possibility.
“They do a lot of things for us, and I think they are really great. I have no idea how they could improve,” Franey said. “I don’t know if I would be able to go to school at all if it weren’t for CCTAP. My husband and I are really grateful.”
