Stories & Case Studies
Of the more than 8 million learners who attend community college every year, one in five are raising children. Parenting students come to college with a wide range of backgrounds, strengths, and challenges: Some are starting higher education for the first time, others are returning to college after family obligations called them away. But every single student who is also a parent or caregiver is working to create new opportunities for themselves and their children.
At Achieving the Dream, we know that higher education doesn’t just benefit the students who gain a degree or credential: It has positive impacts on their families for generations. That’s why we partnered with the Annie E. Casey Foundation to launch the Support To Advance Student Parent Practices initiative, a two-year engagement designed to help a cohort of colleges design, implement, and scale policies and practices that improve outcomes for parenting students.
Starting with a strong knowledge base
The grant project began with administering the ATD Student Parent Opportunity Assessment to the participating colleges. Through a collaborative process guided by ATD coaches, teams from each college gained new insights about the parenting students at their institutions and identified key challenges that they would work to address over the coming years.
One of the first hurdles many colleges have to jump is understanding the parenting student population. Lisa Steffensen, dean of students at Roane State Community College, said one of the key lessons her team learned from the opportunity assessment was the difficulty of identifying parenting students. The college, which serves rural eastern Tennessee across several campuses, estimates that 10–15% of its roughly 5,000 students are parents. Because accurately identifying parenting students is a priority, leaders are developing new ways to get more accurate information about this population.
“Because FAFSA data can only be used in aggregate it wasn’t appropriate for our purposes. Developing a way for students to self-identify appeared to be the answer,” Steffensen said.
The college has implemented a method for students to self-identify as parents or caregivers in Raidernet, the online portal where students register for classes, manage financial aid, and access other important information. “This has been very successful,” Steffensen said, “but we are still working with IT to refine the reporting features associated with the indicator.”
Photos courtesy of Roane State Community College
Leveraging staff as central connectors
Just on the other side of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia, the Student Parent Opportunity Assessment findings showed Patrick & Henry Community College (P&HCC) that while there were many resources for parenting students available in the community, staff members often lacked knowledge and awareness to connect students to these opportunities. The college serves about 3,300 students annually in a rural area, 20%–30% of whom are estimated to be parents or caregivers. When staff and faculty lack information about important resources, this can translate to missed opportunities for hundreds of parenting students.
“This gap in knowledge highlighted the need for a central point of contact,” said Dr. Meghan Eggleston, dean of student services at P&HCC. As of July 2025, the college now has a dedicated staff member on campus who serves as the primary point of contact for all parenting students. This person offers specialized support and ensures students get connected to relevant campus and community resources.
While it’s important for all staff to have a basic understanding of the supports available to parenting students, Dr. Eggleston said that “having a go-to person to maintain a comprehensive resource guide and regularly share updates with advisors and coaches has proven critical.”
Photo courtesy of Patrick & Henry Community College
Meeting students’ needs
Bakersfield College in Southern California serves more than 45,000 students in the city of Bakersfield and in satellite locations throughout Kern County, including some rural areas. The college’s wide range of learners is reflected in the varying backgrounds and needs of its parenting students.
Both the college’s internal analyses and the Student Parent Opportunity Assessment highlighted the importance of disaggregating student data, particularly on one important metric: whether or not the students received targeted, holistic support from programs like Cooperative Agencies Resources for Education (CARE) and California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids (CalWORKs).
“Internal data analysis shows that parenting students with support perform better on early leading indicators — such as transfer-level English and math completion in the first year and persistence — compared to those without support,” said Dr. César Jimenez, vice president of student services at Bakersfield.
Based on these findings, the college is designing new ways to support parenting students who do not qualify for high-need programs. This work includes strengthening partnerships with community organizations for housing, food, and child care assistance.
“We have programs such as CARE and CalWORKs programs that help parenting students, but not all parenting students are able to participate,” said Dr. Jimenez. “We want to be proactive in supporting all parenting students.”
Photo courtesy of Bakersfield College
Sustainable transformation
For any college, work to support parenting students must align with broader institutional goals and strategic plans in order to be sustainable. At Roane State, Lisa Steffensen says that three of the four major components of the college’s strategic plan relate to its work with student parents: increasing student persistence and retention rates, increasing postsecondary participation in the community, and advancing community vitality and workforce development.
The focus on community vitality and the workforce is particularly relevant. “By increasing parenting student success rates, parenting students can become gainfully employed in their communities,” Steffensen said.
Included in Bakersfield’s five-year strategic plan is the expansion of on-campus child care services, which Dr. Jimenez says is part of the institution’s “broader commitment to holistic student support, aligning with Vision 2030 goals focused on equity in access, success, and support.” The college is also laying the groundwork to track parenting student data as part of its 2025–28 Student Equity Plan, which builds on and supports the priorities outlined in the strategic plan.
Dr. Eggleston at P&HCC says that their work with parenting students directly supports all three pillars of the college’s institutional strategic plan: access, progress, and success. When it pertains to access, for example, one of the team’s goals under the initiative is to increase enrollment of parenting students year over year, an outcome which furthers the P&HCC’s broader goal of expanding access to higher education for underserved populations in the community.
“Because of these strong alignments,” Dr. Eggleston said, “this initiative has been a natural extension of our student success work from the outset.”
A community effort
A key element of the Support To Advance Student Parent Practices initiative is that the cohort colleges are not engaged in this work alone. Throughout the initiative, colleges receive dedicated support from ATD coaches, which Dr. Jimenez says has been key to addressing the needs of Bakersfield’s parenting students. “They provide valuable insights and feedback, enabling us to address issues more effectively and develop long-term, sustainable solutions,” Dr. Jimenez said.
All three colleges participate in a community of practice, a peer learning approach that helps team members from each institution hear firsthand how others have tackled certain challenges and facilitates the easy sharing of successful strategies across colleges.
“The collaborative learning environment — especially through the community of practice — has encouraged us to think more creatively and remain student-centered in our approach,” said Dr. Eggleston of P&HCC.
“It’s been encouraging to see that we’re not alone in the challenges we face,” Roane State’s Steffensen added.
Participants in the cohort are also invited to attend the annual DREAM conference. In February 2025, Roane State joined other institutions in the Network to share insights from scaling supports for parenting students.
“Attending DREAM was a highlight for our parenting student representatives,” Steffensen said. “The experience broadened their understanding—not only of how to better support parenting students, but also of the many interconnected ways colleges can advance student success.”
As participating institutions scale and fine-tune their efforts to support parenting students, their successes will continue building the collective knowledge of the ATD Network. And the team members from this initiative already have valuable insights to share with their peers.
A solid data foundation is essential, Dr. Jimenez stressed. “An accurate representation of this population is a critical first step in effectively supporting and advocating for parenting students.”
When it comes to designing supports, Steffensen stressed that college leaders and faculty should listen to the students they serve. “Invite parenting students to give you feedback in as many ways as possible to encourage maximum participation.”
Dr. Eggleston echoed the importance of understanding, engaging, and empathetically listening to parenting students in order to inform strong policies that support them. “In short,” she said, “lead with empathy, stay curious, and build systems that reflect the reality of your students’ lives.”
