Single mother students often find themselves in a paradoxical position: Their children are both what drives them to enroll in college and what makes it so challenging to complete, given that higher ed was not designed with student parents in mind.

Consequently, higher education institutions seeking to support this population continue to wrestle with some big questions:

How can colleges pave the way for these students to more seamlessly integrate school, family, life and work? How can they increase single mother learners’ degree and credential attainment rates so they can have greater access to family-sustaining career opportunities?

Education Design Lab (“the Lab”), with multi-year grant support from ECMC Foundation, is well on its way to getting answers to these questions.

Spotlight on the Single Moms Success Design Challenge
In 2019, the Lab selected and led a cohort of four institutions from across the country through an intensive, human-centered design process to learn how each of these community colleges might dramatically improve completion rates for single mothers by intentionally addressing their unique needs.

The colleges are: Central New Mexico Community College (Albuquerque, New Mexico), Delgado Community College (New Orleans, Louisiana), Ivy Tech Community College (Indiana), Monroe Community College (Rochester, New York).

“Our goal with this challenge is to dramatically increase attainment rates of degrees and high-quality credentials by single mother learners at each participating school,” said Miriam Swords Kalk, the Lab’s Head of Design Practice. “We wanted to determine what needed to be created, changed or adjusted at each of these colleges to get there.”

Six Key Learnings to Benefit Single Mother Learners
As a result of the Single Moms Success Design Challenge, which included an intensive series of interviews and focus groups with single mother learners— six  important insights  emerged:

• Insight #1: Streamlined support models that pair basic needs supports with career-building opportunities can enable a sense of growth for single mothers.
• Insight #2: Single mother learners’ sense of belonging can be supported through fostering authentic relationships and inclusive institutional cultures.
• Insight #3: Single mother learners’ sense of agency requires flexible educational experiences aligned with their goals, priorities and interests.
• Insight #4: Investment in data infrastructure to identify and chart the paths of single mother learners is critical.
• Insight #5: Deepening awareness of single mother learners’ experiences paves the way for success.
• Insight #6: Colleges must collaborate—within and beyond the institution—for sustainability and scale.

What’s Changing? Examples of Exciting Work Across Community Colleges
In 2021, using these insights as a guide, the four colleges launched pilot programs designed to better address the needs of single mother learners at their institutions and have continued to iterate on them based on ongoing learnings. Each college was given $50,000 in start-up funding as part of this grant to support pilot implementation.

Here are some examples of their work:

Central New Mexico Community College began offering $1,500 unrestricted scholarships to Luna Scholars (single moms who meet specific academic criteria). These students can use the funds however they like to best support themselves and their families as they move through college. They also distributed childcare vouchers through their “Little Suncats” program.  They have hosted a series of family-friendly events each term, including family fun fairs, movie nights, and study halls with childcare to support parenting learners preparing for final exams.  

Delgado Community College has incorporated a focus on parenting learners into its latest institutional strategic plan and launched an online community on its mobile app just for single moms.  They have also offered scholarships for single moms approaching completion of their programs to help address any barriers that may hinder them from crossing the finish line.        

Ivy Tech Community College’s Learn Anywhere courses give learners a choice on a weekly basis about how they would like to engage in their learning—synchronously in person, synchronously online, or asynchronously online. This concept originated prior to COVID to help address scheduling, child care and transportation barriers faced by many single mother learners and has evolved into a core instructional model for any Ivy Tech student across the state.                                      

Monroe Community College introduced a dedicated success coach who served as parenting learners’ central point of contact for support of any kind. They have also created empathy training and professional development opportunities for faculty and staff to learn how to better support parenting learners and their families.         

The Work Continues       
Over the next several months, the Single Moms Success cohort will wrap up pilot data collection to share out updated insights and informed practices for supporting single mother learners.   Each institution remains committed to supporting single mother learners and plans to continue iterating on their programs into the future.  

“I do this work because I deeply believe in contributing to a world where everyone has opportunities to create the futures they want for themselves,” said Swords Kalk. “Today, we have a much broader and deeper understanding of what needs to change in order to support single mother learners across these institutions and across postsecondary education in general—and that gives me a great deal of hope.”

In 2024, Education Design Lab received funding from ECMC Foundation to support a new project that will assist postsecondary education practitioners across the country to better serve parenting learners. The project aims to gather best practices, data and resources that support the postsecondary ecosystem and centralize the materials to support institutions and organizations to improve student mother success.