Weber State University
Financial obstacles, lack of affordable childcare, and poor awareness of resources are often at the heart of a woman’s inability to stay enrolled in school. Weber State has three unique services that help address these issues. The first is the WSU Women’s Center which provides a woman-centered perspective in connecting women students to academic support and to other campus and community resources. The Women’s Center empowers women to organize and fully utilize all personal, campus and community resources to best support their educational objectives. Some specific best practices include: initiating one-on-one interventions that assess individual challenges the student faces; providing financial resources and information in the forms of scholarship, loans, and IDA information; facilitating referrals to the child care resources on campus and in the community; providing community referrals and resources; and following up with students via phone or email.
The second is Weber State University’s Nontraditional Student Center’s drop-in childcare service. The Hourly Childcare Center is a state-licensed facility designed to provide flexible hourly or back-up care for the children of WSU students. A child may be at the center for a maximum of four hours each day while the parent is on campus attending class. The third is the Dream Weber program which provides free tuition and fees to students (women and men) whose annual household income is $27,000 or less. The Dream Weber Program uses a combination of federal and state financial aid, and money given to the university from generous donors. All three of these programs/resources are making a difference in the lives of hundreds of WSU students.