ASUW has recently re-endowed their Child Assistance Scholarship which provides ten $1,000 scholarships every Spring semester. ASUW took $115,000 out of their budget and reinvested it into their Child Assistance Scholarship fund.
According to the bill the purpose of the scholarship is “To lighten the financial difficulty of students who are parents.”
It also takes into consideration that every one out of three students is a non-traditional student. To apply for the scholarship a person must be a full-time student and have children.
“Students must also turn in a written resume of community and campus involvement, awards, employment, etc,”According to the bill. “[As well as ]a 750 to 1000 word essay written on a
topic, chosen by the ASUW President and Committee chair annually, pertinent to financial need.”
“Childcare costs more than tuition,” Senator Nancy McKee said. “Full time childcare is about $1,500 to $1,600 a month.”
McKee said she has applied for the scholarship before, about two years ago. Currently she pays around $1,000 for childcare every month, and that is only part-time.
The scholarship allows a person to apply and receive it more than once and does not exclude people on the basis of age, age of children, number of children, or custody. For each application reading there is a committee consisting of one ASUW executive, two ASUW senators, one freshman senator, one student-at-large, one non-traditional student, and an ASUW advisor, who will all go over and discuss the application.
“It’s a lot of money for ASUW to put into a scholarship program,” ASUW Vice President Tyler Wolfgang said. “But there has been overwhelming support for it.”
Wolfgang worked with a group over the Summer of 2016 to try and raise funds for the scholarship but they came up short of what they needed.
“This reinvestment into the child assistance scholarship will make it its own endowment so it can also generate funds at the same time,” Wolfgang said.
McKee said the scholarship could help improve retention.
“I think that anyone who gets it has an increased chance of staying in school,” McKee said. “It definitely takes off some of the stress of paying for daycare.”
Right now ASUW will continue to give out ten $1,000 Child Assistance Scholarships every Spring semester with no increase in the money awarded.
“This scholarship is very important, I know how hard and expensive it is to not only go to school but to go to school with kids,” said McKee.
There is student support for the bill as well.
“I think it’s a really solid investment on behalf of the University,” Amanda Biggs, a sophomore at UW, said. “I feel like sometimes students who do have children feel unencouraged to attend college so the fact that the University is putting forth effort to encourage those students is really good.”
