Student caregivers at tribal colleges and universities face unique challenges while balancing their education and caregiving responsibilities. The Family-Friendly Tribal and Rural Campuses Project aims to address these challenges, while highlighting the strengths of tribal colleges and communities, by collecting data and sharing insights to strengthen campus supports and conditions.
The project is a partnership between the Urban Institute, the American Indian College Fund, PERG Learning, and three tribal colleges and universities (TCUs): Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe University, Salish Kootenai College, and Turtle Mountain College. These colleges use the Family-Friendly Campus Toolkit to assess family-friendly conditions and supports on campus, collecting data about student caregiving responsibilities, including pregnant and parenting students and those caring for adults and elders.
This project has three components:
- With guidance, TCUs review various insights from the toolkit activities and explore opportunities to strengthen campus supports and conditions for student caregivers.
- The Urban Institute and PERG Learning are gathering feedback about improving the toolkit for tribal and rural contexts.
- The Urban Institute is learning about family-friendly strategies that TCUs have developed to serve their student caregivers and sharing those insights with other rural institutions and national higher education stakeholders.
The TCU partners have produced summary snapshots of their efforts to support student caregivers:
The project benefits from the lived expertise of Cordero Holmes, a Skills and Training in Action Research (STAR) Fellow, who is an enrolled member of Tohono O'odham Nation and a student father. His intersectional experiences enhance the team’s engagement and understanding.
