UIC parent-students will soon get a study place of their own
Family-friendly study space opens March 24 on west side of campus
Published on UIC Today
March 17, 2025
Tucked into a corner in the Library of Health Sciences’ lower level is Room B4, the newest space on UIC’s campus for young minds.
Designed with a focus on parent-students and faculty and staff who have young children, the family-friendly study space will open March 24. It holds the requisite table and chairs for UIC students as well as much smaller tables, a play kitchen, comfy chairs made for young children and baskets of magnetic tiles and soft blocks. A bookshelf with titles aimed at toddlers and elementary-age readers reminds visitors they’re still in a library.
“For parents at UIC, this room means a lot,” said Veronica Castillo L.M., a UIC graduate student with a 7-year-old. “It’s always best if (kids) can play with other kids, so that sense of community is there.”
Like other study rooms, Room B4 can be reserved online at the Library of Health Sciences in two-hour blocks. It can hold up to eight people, providing an opportunity for more than one family to study or share resources at a time.
The space was developed by Melinda Young, coordinator of the Little Sparks program, consulting with the Children’s Center, University Health and Safety Office and the Library of Health Sciences.
“There were a lot of conversations with parents who said that they would love a place where they could bring their young child and there will be toys and a place for them to exist,” Young said. “We reached out to several people on campus to see who had open spaces and an open mind to allowing minors accompanied by students into campus spaces.”
Students who are also parents expressed the need for this type of study room in campus research conducted by Dalal Katsiaficas, associate professor in the UIC Department of Educational Psychology. Katsiaficas will moderate a panel at a parent-student symposium March 20 developed by the Women’s Leadership and Resource Center, “From Surviving to Thriving: Cultivating Possibility for Parenting Students in Illinois.”
“There were a lot of things that student-parents spoke about, and one that came up over and over again was wanting a space where they could connect outside of class and bring their children,” Katsiaficas said. “Student-parents imagined something like an indoor playground where parents could work and their children could play but also connect with each other to share resources.”
Cultivating a sense of community
The space on the west side of campus space is a first-of-its-kind at UIC, and organizers hope to replicate it on the east side of campus.
“This shows that UIC is just a very welcoming university, in general,” said Elexis Kirkwood, who will also speak on a panel at the symposium. Kirkwood, mom to a 3-year-old, said UIC welcomes parent-students in other ways, too. “I’ve been able to bring my daughter to a lot of spaces on campus, the Student Center and any of the private study rooms. They also have lactation rooms all around campus, in the Student Center and places like that.”
The Little Sparks program, designed to help parent-students manage subsidized or free child care, started in October 2023. So far, it has helped 15 undergraduate and graduate parent-students with child care opportunities and an additional 72 parent-students get diapers, wipes, formula and other baby essentials.
“The Little Sparks program did so much since opening last year,” Kirkwood said. “They had a coat and shoe giveaway in the winter that was so helpful, because kids grow so fast. They gave us a coat for fall and one for winter and boots, gloves, hats. They also give families diapers and food when they need it. It surprised me they were able to do that for us.”
Little Sparks also helped update the UIC Children’s Center so it can accommodate toddlers as young as 2 years, 6 months — eliminating a previous toddler toilet-training requirement — with renovations inside and outside.
“We’re building out our systems to provide the child care subsidy and trying to expand our reach,” Young said. “Now we’re working to create bigger systems to identify parenting students on a more consistent and cyclical basis so that they don’t have to find us, we can find them a lot easier to let them know the resources that exist.”
Michelle Campos-Jasielec is a senior with a 4-year-old son. She started an online chat group to build a community of UIC parent-students.
“For me, it’s the little things that we can do to help, whatever we can do,” Campos-Jasielec said. “I’m glad the WLRC is there, because they give parents a space to connect and be present.”
Parent-students attending the WLRC’s symposium will hear from two panels about the experiences of other parent-students and can visit a resource fair to connect with other campus and community partners. UIC professors leading on-campus research will moderate the panels.
“I think the best thing we can create is that sense of community,” Castillo L.M. said. “As a parent, you often feel like, ‘OK, who can I talk to about this?’ You want to ask other parents, ‘Can we get a coffee or have a playdate?’”
Lactation rooms among additional UIC resources
Little Sparks lists resources and information on its website for parents seeking everything from a map of lactation rooms on campus to understanding kindergarten enrollment in Chicago Public Schools.
“Based on our data, we’ll put together recommendations for how the Little Sparks program can make decisions to help enhance some or all of the lactation rooms,” said Rothstein, who is also a parent. “We’ll also be making recommendations to the different departments in charge of the lactation rooms to standardize them a little bit.“
UIC public health assistant professor Jessica Rothstein is conducting research to define the resources and any accessibility gaps that might exist for the lactation rooms on campus. UIC has 27 lactation spaces, with 24 located across the east and west sides of campus.
In the meantime, Room B4 will begin accepting reservations this week.