Student Parent Support Initiative Grant

To ensure they have the supports they need to succeed, the Minnesota Office of Higher Education (OHE) in partnership with the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) has awarded \$5.3 million in Student Parent Support Initiative Grants to 13 organizations, including \$916,930 to Minneapolis College.

Once received, the funds will be used to support the academic goals, health, and well-being of student parents. Information about how to apply for funding will be available in the coming months.

“If we want to be the best state in the country for raising a child, then we need to invest in the success of our parents,” OHE Commissioner Dennis Olson said. “The grants will play a critical role in ensuring any current or expecting parent has the support they need to earn a credential, giving them the ability to better provide for their family and support the success of their child.”

Student parents face multiple barriers to college enrollment, persistence, and completion. These barriers include constraints with time and money, lack of child care resources and academic support, or may feel excluded from traditional campus support services.

Student Parent Support Initiative Grants aim to bridge the opportunity gap by increasing access to crucial resources and services, ensuring that children have a healthy start, and families have access to affordable and quality child care and early education; access to mental health supports; and stable housing. By helping stabilize their needs in college, this initiative sets the foundation for overall future success.

This effort not only supports the parent’s success, it also benefits the child. Parental education is linked to upward mobility in their children through increased lifetime earnings, improved reading and mathematics skills, improved health, increased college enrollment, persistence, and completion, in addition to decreased incarceration, teenage pregnancy, and poverty rates.

According to Dean of Students Becky Nordin, “Minneapolis College Student Resource Center is excited to be awarded the Student Parent Support Initiative grant. Student parents will be able to apply for grant funds to help support their family basic needs.” 

Family basic needs can include, but are not limited to food, housing, shelter, health, transportation, education, childcare (including after-school and activities), clothing, utilities, school supplies, telephone, and technological tools. 

Student parents that apply for the grant will be awarded based on part time and full-time enrollment and cost of attendance. “We are looking forward to receiving this award and working with our student parents. We know that these funds will have a positive impact for our students and their children,” said Nordin. 

For more information, read the OHE press release.