In December 2011, the West Chester University Children’s Center closed its doors, and our community lost a valuable resource and support for students, staff and faculty. For 26 years, the Center provided high quality, affordable and accessible child care and early education for the children of women and men who studied and worked at WCU.
The Faculty Senate would like to express its sincere thanks and appreciation to the staff of the Center for their years of service to the University. Over the past three decades hundreds of children benefited from childcare that encouraged play and exploration in a loving and nurturing atmosphere. We also want to express our concern to those members of the WCU community whose lives have been negatively impacted by the closing of the Children’s Center.
The Children’s Center grew out of an initiative in the mid-1980s by the WCU Women’s Center to address a pressing need expressed by women on campus for affordable childcare. These included graduate and undergraduate students who depended on the Center’s lower cost, flexibility and accessibility in order to manage having a family while finishing their degrees. Indeed, current students who have children have expressed concern about their ability to stay in school without the Children’s Center. These students and others need our support in their efforts to reach their educational goals in order to secure a financially stable future for their families. We argue that this should be a priority for a public institution of higher education, especially during difficult economic times when added worries about childcare can force students to abandon their pursuit of a degree.
Faculty and staff also relied heavily on the Children’s Center. For many, having the ability to find high quality care for their children on campus allowed them to have a work-life balance that made them more effective in their ability to teach and serve the needs of all students. It stands to reason that employees who know that their young children are well-cared for, happy and close at hand are more satisfied in their workplace and more productive. Access to childcare and the commitment to a family-friendly workplace that the Center represented was a valuable recruitment tool; its removal may hurt the quality of WCU faculty and staff in the future.
Finally, the Children’s Center provided a highly-regarded community service and observation site for students working toward careers in education and related fields. Every semester, students from the Colleges of Education, Health Sciences and Visual and Performing Arts observed, gathered data, volunteered or worked in the Center, providing a benefit to the campus community, while gaining valuable learning experiences. It is shortsighted of the University to lose this valuable resource for our students, faculty and future teachers, especially since WCU has such an excellent reputation in this area.
The Faculty Senate has taken up the challenge of focusing on issues that affect campus climate, including issues that transcend individual academic and service units, and affect individuals across campus communities. We believe that supporting students, faculty and staff who have children by offering childcare options improves the campus climate for all who study and work at WCU. These parents are students who are working towards a better life for their families; faculty who are striving to provide the best undergraduate and graduate education possible; and staff without whom this university could not function. The parents of our university community deserve our support, and it is our sincere hope that the stakeholders across the university and administration in the future will find viable long-term options for child-care on campus.
Dr. Geeta Shivde is a psychology professor at West Chester University and faculty senator. She is writing on behalf of the faculty senate. She can be reached at GShivde@wcupa.edu.