“I had to figure out how to tell a staff person I needed a break in the middle of this long interview schedule to nurse. If that was hard for me as a presidential candidate, what is it like for a student that has a full day’s worth of classes and doesn’t have the time and the necessary sanitary space to nurse?”
– Dr. Daria Willis
Interview with Dr. Daria Willis
As President of Maryland’s Howard Community College, Daria Willis, PhD, is a passionate advocate for supporting the school’s many student-parents. She sees this segment of her student body as critical to the school’s success. And — as a one-time student-parent who earned a doctorate and became a college president — she has a unique and inspiring perspective on the challenges they face.
Can you tell us a bit about your experience as a student-parent when you were in college?
I became a student-parent when I was a student at Florida A&M University. I ‘d been a smart high school student with a high GPA. Then when I got to college, I thought, “I’m finally away from home, so I can party like everybody else does.” I partied a little too hard, went from being on the presidential scholars list to academic probation. Next thing I knew, I was pregnant. Then I had my daughter and got married. I remember saying to my daughter when she was just a tiny infant that I didn’t want her to look at me one day and think I was nothing. She was really the impetus for me to get my act together and do better in school.
So, with incredible support from my mother, I caught up in school, got my grades back up, and graduated with my bachelor’s degree in 3 years with a degree in history, magna cum laude.
Fast forward, I went back to FAMU and got my master’s degree, then a PhD in history at Florida State. I taught on 2 college campuses in Texas and picked up some administrative appointments, then landed in Syracuse, New York, for 3 years as provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at Onondaga Community College. I moved to Washington State right before the pandemic and became president of Everett Community College and then, in 2022, became president of Howard Community College in Columbia, Maryland.
Over this entire time, I had my child with me. She moved across the country with me and has done everything with me.
At what point did you start thinking about how a college can best support student-parents?
It was at Everett where I really started thinking about the impact of being a student-parent and how, when you’re a college president, you’re the decision maker and can effect change. I’ve tried my best to make sure our student-parents have what I lacked when I was in college. When my daughter was born 20 years ago, nobody was talking about student-parents like we do today. Twenty years ago, when you were pregnant on campus, it was as if you got pregnant by yourself and there wasn’t a guy somewhere that helped you do it. The woman was “at fault.” It was not a badge of honor but a badge of shame.
But you also felt invisible. Even on an HBCU campus, I was largely invisible because very few people wanted to be supportive. When I went to Everett, there were things we were able to accomplish for student-parents. We installed a lactation pod on campus because there was nowhere for people to nurse. We put in baby changing tables in all restrooms on campus, all gender. We even added a children’s section in the new library.
Did I ever think when I was a student-parent I’d be a president of a college one day trying to give back to other student-parents and other students who have challenges? Absolutely not. But I’m grateful to be in this position.
What are the main challenges student-parents face?
One major challenge is time. When student-parents have to pick up their children from day care, make food for them, or sit and do homework with them, these college students don’t always have enough time to focus on their own studies. Another issue is stigma. Student-parents don’t want to tell people they’re a parent. One, they don’t want the “Scarlet Letter” look from fellow students or professors. Two, they don’t want anyone to take pity on them. When we look at the data, student-parents are some of the most successful students on a college campus, which – having been through it myself – isn’t surprising to me. Like many of these students, when I had my daughter in college, something clicked for me, and I knew I needed to grow up.
Finances are also a real challenge. Student parents have to keep the lights on in their homes and pay bills. They have to work. We had a student-parent whose day care cost went up $20 a week. She couldn’t afford it and had to bring her child to class. The professor said, “You can’t have that kid in this class because of the college’s policies.”
When I was interviewing for my job at Everett Community College my youngest was about 6 months old and I was still nursing. I had to figure out how to tell a staff person I needed a break in the middle of this long interview schedule to nurse. If that was hard for me as a presidential candidate, what is it like for a student that has a full day’s worth of classes and doesn’t have the time and the necessary sanitary space to nurse? From this standpoint, I’d say another thing student-parents need is understanding from professors.
Data from the New America Foundation shows that one in 5 US college students is a parent. Do you think there’s awareness of these numbers by college faculty, staff, and administrators, and by the general public?
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in rooms with presidents, especially men, and they ask, “Oh, that’s a thing we’re supposed to think about?” On the other hand, I do believe people know and they make a choice either to feign ignorance or just not care. Because what I’ve heard, even from people who went through it themselves, is “Nobody helped me. So, why do I need to help them?” But, quite honestly, everybody had help in some form to get where they are today.
Whether you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth or whether you worked, somebody gave you that job, somebody gave you an interview, or somebody did something to help you advance. Once we get careers and have influence, we tend to forget what we were like as our younger selves, and we can be judgmental of others. As for the public, I believe that people know about student-parents. They may not know how many college students are parents, but they see them around, in the grocery store, or on public transportation. They can choose to ignore it, but they see it. Whether they have the agency to do something supportive, that’s a different subject.
I think the student-parent conversation has taken on more prominence today because we’re talking more about mental health and wellness for students. We’re looking at the third iteration of what’s important in higher education. The first iteration is about enrollment: getting as many students in the door as possible. The second iteration of higher ed is how many buildings and pretty stuff you can build on your campus. Now, in this iteration with the Department of Education saying, “You need outcomes,” it’s not just about students graduating, but about them getting jobs as well and succeeding beyond school. People are asking the question, “What do we need to do to support these students?”
The knowledge of student-parents has also risen because they have become representative of all populations on campus. They’re veterans, they’re students of color — they touch different demographics. This makes the conversation, in my opinion, more robust.
What kinds of supports can colleges offer student-parents and what do you provide at Howard Community College?
We have a Children’s Learning Center with a capacity of approximately 80 children. Thirty to 40 percent of the child care slots are set aside for student-parents at HCC, who get free tuition for their kids. We also opened a student-parent study room in our library. We learned from a survey that the 2 programs the college offers that students consider the most supportive are a calculator loan program for math classes and the student parent study room. We also have donors who provide some financial support to student-parents, including money for books and for child care costs.
One of the services I’ve seen at other schools is a family wellness center, which is something we’re trying to build. Our plan is to gut a floor in our Student Services building and make it a one-stop shop for all students, including having a family wellness room. If you need diapers, wipes, Similac, or clothing, those supports will be there for you. We have some of that already in our food pantry location, but we’re seeing a need to bring all of those types of services in one place for our students.
Lastly, we’re working on courses that are student-parent friendly, which means we’ll have some identifier on the schedule to say this professor understands the challenges of student-parents. We hope that as we start this training process for faculty who want to be more inclusive, it’ll trickle down to other faculty across the college and eventually being student-parent friendly will be something that happens naturally across the institution.
From a curricular standpoint, our top 20 courses are now in a 7-week format. The goal is to get students out quicker because student parents don’t have time to take all 15-week classes. Data show that when you offer sessions in a truncated period of time, it helps students cycle through their education at a faster rate, but you can still maintain the same high-quality classes. We want to help student-parents get in, get out, and get on with their lives.
What are the institutional benefits of supporting student parents?
From a dollars-and-cents standpoint, it’s cheaper to do what we can to keep these students, versus finding new ones. That’s the business case. I have to bring in money, so I’ve got to keep enrollment up and keep students in school to get their 2-year degrees. There are times we see students leave us earlier for myriad reasons. I tell my staff it’s cheaper to keep them. The more students we lose, the more we have to rely on our recruiters to beat the pavement to bring students in.
We truly prioritize students achieving success while they’re in school with us. You can’t be a good student if you’re hungry, or if you’re homeless, or worried about your kids having clothes on their backs, or books or food. I’m a college president but I’m a human first and my job is to make sure every student that comes to this campus has what they need to be successful. So, if success for them looks like a place for their kid to be when they’re in class, we’ll build it for them. If they need a place to study because they don’t have that at home, and we can provide it in the library on campus, that’s what I’m here to do.