KC Spotlight - Socioeconomic and Class Issues in Higher Education

The Region IV-W KC for SCIHE is growing quickly with the support of our NASPA IV-W family! SCIHE was created at the NASPA Annual Conference in Baltimore, MD in 2014. Since that time NASPA IV-W has the second highest number of participants, surpassed only by our friends in IV-E.

What are we up to?

SCIHE is looking to grow its participant base through the use of social media, book clubs, blog posts, and other various methods of communication. We want to hear from YOU! How can we best reach your campus and provide information to you? Let us know.

We have recently added the umbrella of foster care and homeless youth to our KC. This means we are adding ways to assist our students in these populations all while supporting them in their SES needs on our campuses. Casey Family Programs is an organization whose mission is to “provide and improve-and ultimately prevent the need for-foster care”. The Casey Family Programs (http://www.casey.org/supporting-success/) estimate that only 7-13% of foster care youth ever enroll in higher education programs. Of those students, only a mere 2% graduate from college. Our hope is that our KC can find ways to better serve these students and deliver that information to our campuses.

Additionally, homelessness continues to be a growing issue among students in higher education. Unfortunately, many of these students go unnoticed because they either don’t consider themselves homeless (are couch-surfing or staying with friends) or they are afraid of the stigma of reporting. The National Associate for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth (http://www.naehcy.org/educational-resources/higher-ed) is a good resource for more information about how to assist students on your campus. Most recently, NAEHCY implemented a program called Home for the Holidays which expressed ways to assist homeless and foster care students during academic breaks. That article and more information can be found here: http://naehcy.org/educational-resources/home-for-the-holidays-2015.

It is our hope that through sharing these resources and information we can assist all campuses in both recognizing these students and providing services that can keep them on our campuses and help them thrive. Our KC is currently working on a resource map that shows what resources are available for the population we serve on an interactive map that includes information about the service along with contact information. More about that in the months to come!

We hope that you will join us in the effort to reduce the stigma and allow our foster care and students experiencing homelessness to stand up and know that all we care about is where they are going, not how they got here.

S. Nicole Ferguson is the Chair for the Socioeconomic and Class Issues in Higher Education Knowledge Community for NASPA IV-W and a proud Arkansas Razorback. For more information about this KC, visit https://www.naspa.org/constituent-groups/kcs/socioeconomic-and-class-issues-in-higher-education.