Long Range Planning

FINAL proposal submitted 6/30/17. Thank you to the 512 signed supporters for this important work!

Download final proposal with full appendices here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_-SYAbAZvC5dktxZ2Mya3N5OUU

The Student Parent Alliance and Mothers in Academia, in partnership with the Office of the Vice Provost for Graduate Education (VPGE), the Graduate Life Office (GLO), and The Stanford WorkLife Office propose a Family Resource Center, committed to the holistic support and success of undergraduate and graduate student and post-doc parents. This proposal is the result of several years of needs-assessment conducted among nearly two hundred student parents, mostly mothers, at Stanford and is intended to plant the seed for Stanford to develop a world-class support system for its students and postdocs who are simultaneously learning at Stanford and raising the next generation. Establishing a Family Resource Center will be a foundational first step toward Stanford becoming a leader in institutional support for parents, providing a model for the rest of the country, as it has done and continues to do in many other domains.

The Problem

At every level of educational achievement, from high school through PhD programs, becoming a parent can pre-empt or preclude educational opportunities. Balancing parenting along with earning a degree or completing a postdoc at Stanford is no exception. Parenting presents a unique set of challenges for students and postdocs at Stanford that their childless peers do not face. Yet, Stanford has yet to identify parents as a discrete group of students and postdocs with a specific set of needs related to their child-rearing responsibilities. Although Stanford is currently training over 9300 graduate students, according to numerous sources, no department at Stanford collects or maintains data on who the graduate student parents are in our community. For this "invisible population" of students, it is unclear how existing university policies and practices support or hinder their graduate and professional training. From hundreds of conversations over the last few years, however, it appears that the unique needs of this community of scholars often go unmet, sometimes causing significant hardship for student parents including delays in progress toward degree completion.

Some of the key issues identified by Stanford student parents through Student Parent Alliance and Mothers in Academia network meetings from 2014 to present include:

· Access to affordable and quality childcare

· Rising healthcare costs especially for dependents

· Difficulty navigating state sponsored support programs such as Medi-Cal, WIC, and CalFresh

· Income insecurity

· Housing insecurity

· Limited access to lactation spaces

· Childbirth accommodations

· Lack of centralized institutional support

· Lack of spaces on campus dedicated to promoting community among student and postdoc parents

Although some of these issues represent needs that Stanford has yet to address, support for others exists but is provided piecemeal by various different offices and departments including the Office of the VPGE, the Graduate Life Office, the Student Affairs office, Residential & Dining Enterprises, the WorkLife Office, Cardinal at Work, the Financial Aid Office, the Bechtel International Center, the Women's Community Center, and the Title IX office. As a result, it is often unclear to parents who to contact with questions or concerns, and many students struggle with issues simply because they are unaware that programs and benefits that might help exist. The decentralized nature of the supports that Stanford currently provides parents can make those supports difficult and time-consuming to access, posing a substantial obstacle for individuals who are often already time-constrained due to their dual roles as parents and scholars. Additional details about the issues that pertain to student parents as well as how Stanford compares to peer institutions are detailed in the appendices and on the Student Parent Alliance website: https://sites.google.com/view/sustudentparent/ [Log off Stanford gmail for access].

Perhaps unintentionally, this lack of support for student parents to date has effectively limited access to this renowned institution for scholars who are also parents. Inadequate support has contributed not only to fewer Stanford-trained parent scholars than we might otherwise have but also to a culture that devalues the work and importance of raising children. Of course, Stanford is not alone in this devaluation. Organizations are a reflection of the values of the society in which they are embedded, replicating the inequities that exist within that society. The culture at large and academia in particular have long devalued the work of child-rearing. But as a powerful institution, Stanford has an opportunity to present an alternative view. As an engine of social change, Stanford can, through its actions and policies, lead the way toward establishing a new norm of respect and set a new standard of support for the essential work of raising children that has long gone unacknowledged, unappreciated, and unsupported by institutions.

The Solution

How can Stanford be a leader in supporting the diversity of learners and innovators so that our scholarly and family lives are dually recognized and supported?

We propose that Stanford establish a fully-funded and staffed Family Resource Center as the foundation and institutional home for student and postdoc parent support. Physically, the Center will be a centralized multi-purpose campus resource where student parents can connect with other student parents and find a sense of community at Stanford. Students can access resources, seek informed advice, nurse babies, collaborate on research, and form lasting friendships. Functionally, the Center will be a one-stop shop where student parents can find answers to all of their parenting-related questions, from childcare to lactation rooms to insurance coverage. The Center will be staffed by individuals knowledgeable about all of the institutional supports available for parents and empowered to advocate on behalf of student parents to the University to provide additional supports as needed.

The Family Resource Center is not an end in itself but an essential first step toward institutionalizing the work that needs to be done to create a campus that is truly open to student and postdoc parents. Once established, we propose that the Family Resource Center staff review the needs-assessment conducted by the Student Parent Alliance and Mothers in Academia (See Appendix A for a summary of findings) to prioritize next steps to increasing support for student and postdoc parents on campus. In addition, Stanford can look to its peer institutions that have begun this work. For example, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Chicago and the University of California at Berkeley have on-campus family resource centers, and UC Berkeley and the University of Washington offer approximately $10,000 per year for childcare subsidies for graduate student families in need. Although the steps that other institutions have taken may serve as guidelines, we encourage Stanford to think beyond what other institutions have done to identify the actual needs and how best to meet them.

A Family Resource Center may seem a modest proposal with limited impact, but in fact, this proposal has the potential to shape the University – and the surrounding culture - in far-reaching ways. This proposal challenges Stanford to live up to its highest ideals. As stated in its founding principles, one of the primary purposes of Stanford University is “to promote the public welfare by exercising an influence in behalf of humanity and civilization”. What better way to promote the public welfare and exercise influence on behalf of humanity than to make it possible for individuals to both achieve at the highest levels in their professional domains and raise healthy families without experiencing unmanageable levels of stress? Such an investment in student and postdoc parents will reap rewards far beyond the boundaries of Stanford’s campus. Because Stanford is a leader in academia, the approach Stanford takes to supporting student parents influences the approach that other institutions of higher education take as well. And because Stanford graduates are overrepresented in leadership in all sectors of our society and the world, they are often given opportunities to set organizational norms. Individuals trained in an environment in which they observe clear and unmitigated support for parenting will mimic those policies in future institutions they lead, helping to create nothing less than a world in which people can live more meaningful lives. A Family Resource Center will provide an institutional home for this support. Establishing this Center and providing the resources that student parents need will send a clear message both inside and outside of Stanford that the work of raising the next generation of children is valuable and worthy of institutional support. This proposal lays the groundwork for Stanford to lead the way in a domain of incalculable importance, and we ask that you give it serious consideration.

Sign your name to support this proposal by 6/30! Thank you to each and every supporter!

https://stanforduniversity.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_2rY5PUsSN3y2QfP [We are no longer collecting signatures at this point. Thank you!]