Feb. 8—If you’ve visited Santa Fe Community College recently, it’s sometimes hard to tell whether it’s a campus for big people or little ones. And that’s by design.

Little spaces, furnished with child-size chairs and piles of toys, dot the campus. There’s one in the hallway of the main entrance and another outside the financial aid and advising offices. There’s one inside the college’s library, boasting a collection of bilingual picture books for checking out. There’s even one in the tutoring center, stocked with educational tablets.

Santa Fe Community College’s family-friendly spaces are part of a campuswide push to create a multigenerational nucleus of learning in which student parents — and their children — feel welcome and supported on campus.

The goal of the initiative, ongoing since 2022, is to disrupt the “status quo in higher ed” by ensuring the college welcomes not only students but also the families and experiences students bring with them, said Catron Allred, director of SFCC’s Early Childhood Center of Excellence.

“We’re acknowledging the whole student,” Allred said. “That means they come with their family, they come with their lives — and that we as an institution and the institution of higher education are here to support them.”

And the college is not done yet, Allred said during an event Thursday showcasing the college’s services for student parents. In partnership with other New Mexico community colleges, SFCC is spearheading a data-gathering effort, circulating a survey across the state to better understand the challenges student parents face in pursuing higher education.

SFCC’s student parents, many of them part of the college’s new Student Parent Alliance, have a few ideas of their own, like drop-in child care options or an outdoor play area with space for parents to study.

In New Mexico, about one in four college students is a parent.

That figure, already higher than the national average, is likely to grow, as the Opportunity Scholarship allows more New Mexico residents to attend college tuition-free. The scholarship, coupled with the state’s child care assistance policies, is a game-changer for student parents, said Jackie Rodriguez, a criminal justice major at SFCC and mom to a 2-year-old.

As a single parent with one income to provide for herself and her daughter, Rodriguez said she originally assumed she couldn’t afford college. The Opportunity Scholarship changed that.

“When I found out about that scholarship, I thought, ‘Why haven’t I done this a long time ago?’ ” she said.

SFCC was selected as one of seven colleges and universities across the U.S. to join FamilyU’s 2022-24 cohort. Part of Generation Hope, a nationwide nonprofit dedicated to empowering parents to pursue higher education, FamilyU offers institutions help to support student parents.

Over the past two years, the college has been working to improve its services for student parents.

“We’ve always worked with student parents. I don’t want to convey the idea that we just figured out we had student parents and so we thought maybe we ought to start doing something, but we had a lot of efforts that were not necessarily aligned,” said SFCC President Becky Rowley.

In part, that meant adding infrastructure, like changing tables and high chairs, to the college’s spaces, Allred said.

But it also meant changing campus policies, which weren’t punitive to parents but weren’t explicitly welcoming, either. Environments serve as another kind of teacher, Allred said: When students and their children see the campus offers family-friendly spaces, it signals they’re accepted.

Another major piece of the puzzle: Vanessa Rodriguez, a SFCC student pursuing a degree in biological sciences and the mother of two children under 3. Throughout this academic year, she has served as the college’s FamilyU Student Parent Fellow, representing student parents’ perspectives to campus leadership and organizing events to build community among her peers.

She described the experiences as “building our own little village” of student parents and supporters.

The next step, Allred said, is the New Mexico College Student Experience Survey, which will offer an in-depth, statewide look at what student parents need to be successful in college.

“We’re going to have a statewide look at student parents in New Mexico … so that we can identify: What are those wraparound services? If we have free college and we have free child care, what else do we need so that student parents are making that leap?” Allred said.

For the most part, student parents said they were happy with the specialized services they’ve received at SFCC, but there’s more they’d like to see happen.

Flexible child care options are essential, said Tatiana Griego, a nursing student and mom of a 4-year-old boy. Though SFCC has a large child care center on campus that offers priority to students, it also has a long waitlist. A drop-in option would be helpful, added Andrea Gonzales, another student parent.

Etagu Wondimu, an early childhood education student with a 7- and a 2-year-old, envisioned an on-campus, outdoor play space for her kids to enjoy. Gonzales imagined the park with dedicated space — maybe benches or picnic tables — for parents to do schoolwork while supervising play.

And Wondimu said she’d like to see more fathers get involved in the college’s growing community of student parents.

During Thursday’s event, Patricia Trujillo, deputy secretary of New Mexico’s Higher Education Department, applauded the student parents’ commitment to education, a move she said will benefit their children and future generations.

“There has to be somebody who starts the tradition of higher education, and you all are doing that,” Trujillo said.