About Us
Aya
Aya (pronounced as “eye–ah”) is part of the Adinkra—visual symbols linked to the Gyaman kingdom (present day Côte d’Ivoire) and Ashanti culture (present day Ghana). The word Aya is derived from the Twi language, and is translated to “fern”. Aya is a symbol of endurance, resourcefulness, and defiance against oppression (Kojo Arthur, 2017).
The fern is a hardy and resilient plant that can grow in difficult places. "An individual who wears this symbol suggests that (one) has endured many adversities and outlasted much difficulty" (Willis, The Adinkra Dictionary).
Why now?
The historic inequities embedded in our education systems—race, gender, geography, wealth, income, culture—have been further brought to light by the recent seismic shifts in our society. We need allies and champions who can center the lives of pregnant and parenting students in higher educational spaces. Together we can co-create and transform our campuses so that policies and practices build family well-being and generate multi-generational outcomes. The current absence of and the existing ad hoc policies and practices in how universities support their pregnant and parenting students are simply inadequate in supporting pregnant and parenting students’ educational attainment and workforce development. The disparities in outcomes across racial, ethnic, and income groups will continue to widen without concerted and strategic efforts to improve policy and practice for pregnant and parenting students.
Origin Story
Student Parent Joy, housed at California Polytechnic State University (San Luis Obispo), is a media and policy research initiative founded by Dr. Tina Cheuk in early 2023. This body of work is inspired by her time at Stanford University where she earned her MA in Policy, Organization and Leadership Studies (POLS) in 2007 and later her PhD in Education Policy in 2019. As a graduate student parent at Stanford (2014-2019), she experienced the gaping inequities as a new mother while navigating the academy as a doctoral student. She writes about this in Inside Higher Ed in her advocacy and organizing efforts with fellow student mothers (Mothers in Academia) and later expanded to include all student (and postdoc) parents (Student Parent Alliance) at Stanford. While these community building efforts were recognized and lauded by the University (e.g., James Lyon Award for Service, Marjorie Lozoff Prize from the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, Graduate Leadership Award from the Asian American Community Center, Community Impact Award from Stanford Alumni Association), transformative changes to acknowledge and support this student population did not fully come to fruition during her short tenure there.
In the summer of 2019, then Cal Poly undergraduate student parent Ashlee Hernandez, reached out to Dr. Cheuk to learn more about her student parent organizing efforts. As a faculty member at Cal Poly, Dr. Cheuk has been able to apply the lessons she's learned from Stanford and champion student parent leaders like Ashlee so that higher educational institutions can better support the joy and thriving of student parents, creating pathways for multigenerational outcomes for both the student and their children.