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NASPA Knowledge Community
Adult Learners and Students With Children
Calendar of Upcoming Events
National Adult Learners( Non-Traditional) Students Week is November 4-8
Regional Conferences in Fall
Region IV-East— November 3-5 Skokie, IL Region IV-West— November 5-7 Hot Springs, AR Regions V and VI— November 6-9 Salt Lake City
Be sure to follow on Facebook and Twitter for Regional Meet-up infromation
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As a student affairs professional, there are many options for engaging with the teen parents in your community. Many teen parents share other under-represented population characteristics, such as being first generation college attendees, low-income students, women, and students of color. Even if there isn’ t a program on your campus specifically geared toward student parents, you can help connect these young moms and dads to other programs serving under-represented populations such as TRiO, student groups( student parent, non-traditional, commuter, other interest groups), NASPA’ s Adult Learners and Students with Children( ALSC) Knowledge Community, and college prep programs such as Upward Bound or other online college prep programs. You can also locate student parent support programs in your region or check out the websites of similar programs across the nation, which often have encouraging success stories, scholarship tips, and other great resources that can be utilized by student parents anywhere. You could also connect with local teen parent programs to help organize and host a field trip to your college campus. Other options include helping to organize a career day, finding successful former teen parents already on your campus and introducing them to local teen parent programs, and maybe holding a panel of successful former teen parents or starting a volunteer program where the former TPs can act as classroom presenters or mentors to the current TPs. Finally, make sure that your school has admissions representatives assigned to local teen parent programs and try to have materials available for these teens, such as information on scholarships, college prep assistance, FAFSA and other financial aid information.
With a little effort, well-researched resources, and a lot of passion for young families, anyone can create a successful teen parent outreach program. As a society, we need to start talking to all teen parents as if we expect them to go to college, not as if we assume they won’ t, and the earlier we can start talking to them about their post-high school plans the better. Teen parents and low income single mothers are becoming more commonplace at colleges and universities, and those of us working with these populations on campus are on the cutting edge of an exciting new“ normal” in higher education.