Cal Poly Receives Funding to Enhance Support for Student Parents in San Luis Obispo

Cal Poly has joined a new initiative to improve support for students who are also parents. This initiative involves nine colleges and universities across the U.S. Cal Poly, located in San Luis Obispo, will receive $60,000 over two years from the Urban Institute’s Data-to-Action Campaign for Parenting Students. The funds will support data collection and the development of support systems for parenting students, especially single mothers.

The initiative will be led by Cal Poly’s Students with Dependents Program and the School of Education. Courtney Moore, the student services coordinator, noted the difficulty in determining the exact number of student parents, currently estimated at around 100. The project aims to collect accurate data to help provide these students with essential resources like priority registration and financial aid to support their academic success.

Tina Cheuk, an assistant professor in the School of Education, is also a key participant in this project. She works with the CSU Student Parent Network and the California Alliance for Student Parent Success. These groups have helped shape state legislation, including Assembly Bill 2881, which ensures priority registration for student parents at educational institutions in California.

Cal Poly’s involvement in this initiative could influence practices across the California State University system, which includes nearly 460,000 students across 23 campuses. The strategies developed could become a model for supporting student parents statewide.

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