An episode of firsts! Our first live episode recorded at the inaugural Ascend Parent Advisor Convening in Aspen, CO in front of an audience of student parents. Co-hosts David Croom and Dr. Daria Willis (President, Howard Community College) are joined by former guests Michaela Martin, Yolanda Johnson-Peterkin, and Ariel Ventura-Lazo to reflect on their journeys and share their dreams and recommendations for the future of the student parent movement.

What does college success look like for Black and Native student parents? Dr. Deana Around Him and Julian Thompson shed light on student parents’ and administrators’ experiences at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, or HBCUs, and Tribal Colleges and Universities, or TCUs. In conversation with David Croom, Associate Director for the Postsecondary Success for Parents initiative at Ascend, they discuss how Ascend’s new Black and Native Family Futures Fund is advancing student parent success on these campuses and what other colleges can learn from HBCUs’ and TCUs’ institutional cultures.

Julian Thompson is Director of Strategy at UNCF’s Institute for Capacity Building, and Dr. Deana Around Him is a 2022 Aspen Institute Ascend Fellow and senior research scholar at Child Trends.

You can read the episode transcript here.

For more information on 1 in 5, click here.

Growing up, Isis Patterson and her family were constantly operating in survival mode. School offered her the safety and security she lacked at home, so she took a liking to it. When she found out she was pregnant at 15, she kept herself immersed in her schoolwork, graduated with honors, and received a full-ride scholarship to college. Driven by her own experiences with housing insecurity, she studied public policy as an undergraduate student, and pursued housing equity work, leading her to want to better understand the root causes of housing instability. But a graduate program involved financial risk, and she needed affordable housing, childcare, and a tuition package to make her dream feasible. Fortunately, Isis secured housing on an income-based sliding scale, and was able to lean on the support of friends and mentors to pursue a Masters Degree in Urban Planning at Harvard University.  Isis is again balancing being a mom and a student, with the same motivation in mind—the future of her children. Reporter Lisa Bartfai brings us Isis’ story of overcoming generational poverty, achieving educational success, and always striving for more for her family and her community.

Download and share the resource guide based on this episode here.

You can read the episode transcript here.

For more information on 1 in 5, click here.