Tracking student parents difficult

by Stuart Overbey

Daily Lobo

While organizations offer support for student parents, UNM has no method for counting or tracking them, something which is concerning many in the University community.

The waiting list for the UNM Child Care Center hints at the numbers.

Even with the center's recent expansion that allowed 35 children to come off the childcare waiting list, 603 parents still remain waiting. Of those, 275 are undergraduates, 161 are graduate students and the rest are faculty and staff.

The Child Care Center is one of UNM's most popular resources for parental support. Elena Aguirre and Monica Martinez, who run the center, act as mentors and guides to parents, even those who do not use the services. They also assist parents in forming their own informal mentoring and support groups.

In an effort to get more information out about its services, the center participates in the Lobo Network, an organization faculty and staff members use to let others at UNM know about services their departments or offices offer.

Although the office tries to make its services available to as many people as possible, costs and a yearlong waiting list can be discouraging.

"I did look into it," single-mother Allison Benavidez said, "It was really expensive."

The center charges for its services because it is only partially subsidized by UNM and its employees are considered to be skilled because all have college degrees.

Benavidez, president of the campus-based support group, Mom's Connection, uses a daycare program sponsored by the Children, Youth and Families Department for her infant son.

When Benavidez and member Kristen Kelley formed Mom's Connection, they asked the registrar's office for access to a parent database so they could notify student parents of the new group. They said they were told UNM keeps no such records because parental status is considered private information.

Despite UNM not keeping a database of single mothers or students who are parents, there seems to be a demand for childcare information, which is spurring the creation of some other student groups.

Another new single mothers' peer support group will meet at the Women's Resource Center beginning in the spring 2003. Already, the center welcomes women to breast feed at its campus office.

"Our computer pod is the only family-friendly pod on campus," said Summer Little, program services coordinator at the resource center.

Additionally, the center awards the Single Mothers Scholarship, and has established the goal of raising $10,000 this year so it can offer the annual scholarship.

Issues affecting college students who are parents are even beginning to make it into UNM classrooms.

Professors in the Women's Studies Department have consulted with members the Association of Nontraditional Students to help define a course.

Robyn Viera, a member of the association's board of directors, estimated that of the group's 52 members, 25-30 percent are single moms or dads, and another 25 percent are two-parent working families.

"There's a lot of them out there," Viera said of student-parents. "More than anybody realizes."

A lack of awareness about their situation is not the only obstacle student-parents must overcome.

Student-parents must balance obligations to children

But often, student-parents balance obligations to children, school and work while lacing the time to research childcare options.

At schools across the country, the situation is similar, but some new programs are helping student parents.

At Boise State University in 1997, the administration created a center for single parents, housed in the university's women's center.

Goddard College, in rural Vermont, has closed its residential program and now offers only a low-residency program. The program helps students by offering them flexible schedules, although its purpose is not marketed as a solution for student-parents.

"Many of the students are single parents and parents," said Robin Dion, of Goddard's Students Accounts office. "We just don't market it as 'for single parents.'"

Without the costs of a residential program, Goddard can offer a bachelor's program for $4,493 a semester - a relative bargain for an East Coast private school.

Other colleges maintain a traditional curriculum, yet flex schedules and offer new services, such as Cedar Crest College in Pennsylvania. According to a 1994 article printed in U.S. News & World Report, 60 percent of Cedar Crest's all-women student population was over 22. The college created a program in which older students employed younger students to care for their children while they attended classes.

Diana Coyl, professor in UNM's College of Education and faculty advisor to Mom's Connection, said she is often unaware that one of her students is a parent until something goes wrong such as the student failing to complete work because of a sick child.

"I think there should be more awareness of the fact that there are parents going to school," Coyl said.