Family Resource Center serves students with children

Ruth Richert, the spouse of a Penn graduate student, appreciates Penn’s Family Resource Center because it gives her a safe, family friendly location that she can take her two children to on Penn’s campus.

Her children enjoy spending time at the center, meeting new friends and speaking foreign languages with them. Richert especially values the lactation rooms on the bottom floor of the Locust Walk center, where she can spend free time relaxing.

The Family Resource Center has been a resource for people like Richert — students and family members of Penn’s graduate community — since it was founded four years ago, modeled off a similar program at the University of Chicago. This summer, it moved from its old location in Houston Hall to its own facility on the bottom floor of the Graduate Student Center. The new center, which has more than doubled its staff from two to five members, features two lactation centers, play rooms, reading rooms and family bathrooms.

“We have a lot of positive feedback for this new location and can have extended hours,” said Anita Mastroieni, director of the Graduate Student Center and Family Resource Center.

The center provides specific resources that students with children — whether graduate or undergraduate students — may not be aware of. Along with advice and weekly information groups focusing on topics like lactation, the center provides important resources that graduate students might need.

Through one of the center’s programs, students from the Graduate School of Education teach English to spouses of graduate students from other countries — which is extremely relevant to graduate students because “about a third of our students are international which means that if their spouse is on their student visa, they cannot work,” Mastroieni said. Since GSE students generally need experience teaching as part of their degrees anyway, it is a win-win situation — and the center can offer this program for free, Mastroieni added.

Cordelia Loots-Gollin, a second-year Master of Social Work student in the School of Social Policy & Practice, explained a typical day for her working at the Family Resource Center.

“It’s not a substitution for daycare, but we have specific programs going on throughout the week,” Loots-Gollin said. She typically answers questions and signs people into the center. Students have to register for the program to use its services, but membership is free.

Loots-Gollin said the center’s most successful event is its monthly Saturday brunch, a free event for members and a great opportunity for student parents to meet new people.

Another program that has been very well-received is the center’s partnership with care.com. With funding from the Provost’s office, the center has offered discounted childcare with the popular website for $5 per hour, as opposed to the usual $15 going rate per hour.

Emergency Backup Child Care is also available for students and post-doctoral fellows at Penn through this partnership. For a subsidized rate, parents can pay for care for their children in situations like snow days or when their children fall ill and they have to go to class.

It’s hard enough for graduate students to adjust to coursework, Mastroieni said. The center is “trying to ease these transitions — from new graduate student to new parent.”

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