UWT’s Huskies and Pups looks to reach more students

UW Tacoma’s Huskies and Pups, a Registered Student Organization that supports student parents at UWT, is seeking to expand its reach on campus and get more student parents involved with the club.

Huskies and Pups’ mission as stated on their website is to “assist the brave parent-students of UWT while they navigate school, work, and parenting [and be] a place where Huskies can find help connecting with resources for themselves and their pups.”

Ana Kositzky, president of Hus­kies and Pups, is a UWT senior and a student parent herself. Kositzky took over as president last quarter and understands the strength it takes to be successful in school while being a parent.

“Our club aims to provide support for student parents while they are at college,” Kositzky said. “We are hop­ing to expand and become a program on campus but for now we are just an organization.”

UWT’s status as a commuter cam­pus creates a diverse body of students, many being parents.

“We want to create a community where other student parents can come together,” Kositzky said. “This campus is already a satellite campus where people come and go, and for student parents it’s even more so like that. They schedule their classes and campus time around their children so I want to encourage them to be able to bring their kids on campus and be involved in the college experience.”

Huskies and Pups hopes to receive more allocation of funds and resourc­es in order to shift from a club mod­el to becoming a program that can provide supportive child care ser­vices to UWT student parents.

“As a program we would have the space and the funding versus just an RSO that must campaign for money,” Kositzky said.

The first order of business that Huskies and Pups would tackle if they became a program would be campus child care.

“We want to start some form of child care on or near campus that staff, faculty and students can use, because right now there is none,” Kositsky said. “There is a huge shortage.”

The Child Watch at the YMCA is a free resource for UWT students that is open Monday through Friday from 5 to 8 p.m.

“The Child Watch is a resource, but to use it you can’t leave the build­ing,” Kositzky said. “So, it’s good if students wanted to do homework or workout but the issue is students have to go to class, and there are no class­es at the Y. As far as a childhood cen­ter, that’s not what that is.”

As of now, Huskies and Pups is in their recruitment phase, and is looking to reach out to more students in order to begin creating family friendly events and activities for next school year.

Going into the 2018–2019 aca­demic year, Huskies and Pups hopes to establish weekly meetings, cur­rently Huskies and Pups doesn’t hold meeting because student parents often dont have the time to spare.

“We are still figuring out how the club will work and we are trying to recruit more members, and we hope to find out what kinds of events and activities they want,” Kositzky said.

To become a member, email Huskies and Pups at
uwhuskiesandpups@gmail.com