StudyNPlay: Preserving Parent-Child Connection While Supporting Persistence

For parents who are enrolled in college, finding time to study and complete assignments can be immensely challenging amid responsibilities of working, caregiving, and attending classes. Student parents often report staying up long after their children are in bed to study, which can come at the expense of their own mental wellbeing. This time poverty, or insufficient time available to devote to college assignments alongside other responsibilities, is linked to earning fewer credits and increased likelihood of leaving college altogether.

Enter StudyNPlay: a Louisiana-based program partnering with local universities to offer supervised play that unlocks study time for parents. Student parents sign up for two-hour time slots to access a supervised play space, where staff play with their children, and parents remain onsite to study. StudyNPlay recently announced two University of Louisiana System (ULS) partnerships, one with Nicholls State University and another with University of Louisiana Monroe (though StudyNPlay serves students from any local college or university).

I sat down with Dr. Stephanie Styles, Executive Director of StudyNPlay, and Dr. Katie Dawson, Associate Vice President of Enrollment, Innovation, and Talent Strategy for the University of Louisiana system, to learn more about the StudyNPlay model and ULS partnerships.

Our conversation has been edited for length.  

Stephanie Baker: Let’s start with introductions. Tell me about yourself and the StudyNPlay model.

Stephanie Styles: I’m the Founder and Executive Director of Generation Upward Foundation, which is the foundation over the StudyNPlay initiative. We work with students enrolled in postsecondary education. They’re able to come to our centers and study, do homework, or take online classes, while their children are in supervised play. Students can sign up for two-hour study sessions during our evening or weekend hours. The model is supervised play, not child care. It’s a parent proximate model that complements child care by creating dedicated study time that keeps parents and children together.

StudyNPlay came to be because I had a 5 month old son when I started law school. The expectations of being a first year law student were really heavy. My campus had family-friendly spaces, but they were tiny spaces that didn’t meet our needs.

We went to the library once during finals my first year. I had my son with me, snacks, highlighters, I rented the space–everything you need for a successful study session. We got there and he screamed the entire time. People were walking by and looking as my son screamed. I gathered my things and ran out. It made me feel ostracized. 

I needed a place to have my child with me while I worked toward my goals. I spoke to classmates who had the same problem. We were splitting our attention between studying and our children, in a small area, and our kids were getting bored. 

That’s when it clicked for me–I need supervised play. I started seeing ways to do this in other models. At the gym, they have a space for your kid to play while you’re working out. I thought, what if they had that in an academic space? That could really help student parents. 

Baker: And Dr. Dawson, what is your role and how does it connect to supporting student parents? 

Katie Dawson: I’m the Associate Vice President for Enrollment, Innovation, and Talent Strategy at the University of Louisiana System. One of the hats I wear is leading Compete Louisiana, our statewide initiative that reconnects adults with some college experience but no bachelor’s degree to higher education. Whenever possible we connect students with one of our universities, but our priority is student success. If another institution is the better fit, that’s where we send them, because every credit should count. 

Parents are an important part of our Compete Louisiana strategy. In Louisiana, there are over 600,000 adults with some college but no bachelor’s degree. As we have conversations about our state’s workforce needs, we know some adults are parents who need resources to upskill (author’s note: there are an estimated 478,000 parents in Louisiana with some college experience but no degree). 

In Louisiana, siblings are part of the family support structure. We have students that help care for younger siblings. So StudyNPlay is a resource they can have in their back pocket, even if they aren’t parents. 

When I met Dr. Styles, I knew she had something special. This isn’t just a student parent resource. It’s a workforce readiness strategy because it allows us to support parents and caregivers in upskilling.

Baker: Dr. Styles, you experienced the need for supervised play personally as a law student. Was it on your radar how large the student parent population is and that parents beyond law and graduate students would benefit from this model? Nationally, we’re talking about over 3 million undergraduates and 1 million graduate students. 

Styles: I’m the child of a student parent. I remember my mom taking me to class with her. Me “helping” her study when I was a child. Now as a parent myself I realize that’s not what I was doing. But having that experience and seeing her resilience, I knew college was a thing parents were doing.

I felt alone as a student parent, though. I knew there were others, but we were all trying not to sink. Everyone stayed to themselves. There’s reluctance to say, “Hey I’m struggling,” especially when you don’t see that sharing that will unlock any resources.

I was familiar with the needs of student parents because of my mom, but I didn’t know how big the population was. I know now that’s due to a lack of data collection. I think we need to capture data so we better know where student parents are (author’s note: Read more about the need for data collection on student parents here).

Baker: Can you share more about what kind of resources students are being connected to through StudyNPlay?

Styles: We leverage community networks to get students connected to wraparound services to help students get through their program. That means access to diapers and food through community partners, and referrals to our local YWCA for child care. We also provide access to an AI tutoring app that personalizes support for students.  We also refer students to advising, financial aid, and other resources when we hear the need.

Dawson: One partnership Stephanie led is with the East Baton Rouge School District. The district delivers leftover nonperishable snacks to the StudyNPlay Centers. No one has to leave a study session because they don’t have food they need to get through, and no snack items are wasted.

They’ve also started to do a movie night during finals. Parents get extra study time and their child is entertained with a movie and popcorn in a supportive community during a pivotal point in the semester.

Stephanie is amazing at engaging community partners. For example, she mobilized the Junior League of Baton Rouge; that’s how she was able to get a diaper closet and changes of clothes for kids. She’s tried to think through anything that might pull a parent away from study time and make sure resources are on site so kids get what they need and parents can stay.

It’s a community effort to get all these resources, and it’s important because we don’t have a line item in the budget. It takes community partners. 

Baker: Is there anything you’re considering to expand this model?

Dawson: We do plan to expand. Currently, StudyNPlay Centers are operating off campus; we are working to identify funding needed to launch centers that are physically located on campuses. When we do, we’ll connect them with existing campus resources like advising and financial aid. The goal is not to duplicate what campuses already offer, but to bring supports together to make them easier for parenting students to access.

Our goal at the system is to be more accessible to Louisianians. A big part of that is supporting adult, returning, and parenting learners. I’d love to see this model across our campuses, statewide, or even nationally.

Baker: Let’s talk about the hard part: money. How is this work funded?

Styles: We operate through braided funding. 

Dawson: It’s a mix of philanthropic funds, students paying fees, and universities contributing. It’s a sliding scale for students who pay, with the base cost being $25/hour for two children.

Were exploring philanthropic opportunities and industry partnerships. We don’t want funding to be the thing that keeps a parent away.

If a university has enough student parents, they might consider whether student fees can support this work. I’d add that this isn’t a super expensive venture. Our hope is in ten years these resources will be integrated into the student experience and free to use for the parents and families who need them. 

Styles: We also keep costs lower by offering service-learning opportunities. Students who need service learning hours get the opportunity to work and learn in our program to fulfill those hours, and that helps keep costs down.

Baker: What feedback do you hear from student parents about using StudyNPlay? 

Styles: We hear a lot of relief. They appreciate an environment where they don’t feel judged for being a parent and a student. They tell us it helps reduce stress and guilt, and feel that they don’t have to choose between education and family. This model allows us to support student parent persistence, while preserving parent and child connection. 

Baker: What would you highlight about this work for campuses, states, or college systems wanting to support student parents?

Styles: Student parents are some of the most determined and resilient people. The challenge is access, not motivation. When institutions invest in removing barriers to completion for them, student parents can thrive and graduate into the workforce. That’s what we want, good jobs and lasting economic mobility for parents and their families.

Dawson: How do you follow that? Ditto.