Everyone comes to OSU with a unique story.

Some come straight from high school.

Others come from serving in the military.

Some are the first in their family to come.

And some come with family members in tow.

More than 1 in 5 college students in the 2019-2020 school year were parents.

But 52% of student-parents drop out before receiving their degree.

Lack of access to childcare, transportation, and financial resources inhibit student-parents

from completing a degree and supporting their children.

But what if we could improve the experience of parenting-students during their time at
OSU?

This semester we teamed up with ACCESS Collaborative and Ohio StateÕs Office of Diversity and

Inclusion to determine ways to better support student-parents on our campus.
Although resources exist to support student-parents at Ohio State, interviews showed that many

of the existing resources are not being used to their full potential, leaving parenting
students feeling isolated and afraid.

And until these resources are used, how can we justify expanding them?
To drive up utilization of existing resources, we propose a marketing campaign to establish

consistent messaging to the population of student-parents.
The Bonus Buckeye campaign was created to promote existing services for student-parents

in a way that resonates with them and helps that makes them feel seen.
This campaign will increase the use of existing resources and by charting attendance and engagement,

give ACCESS a way to collect data on the student-parents at Ohio State and demonstrate the demand for
their services.

This will ultimately lead to the increase in funding they need to expand their program
to support parenting-students on Ohio StateÕs campus.