Despite losing federal grants, Alamo Colleges works to expand support for parenting students

A few days after Perla Lopez started her first year at Northwest Vista College in 2023, she walked into her first student engagement fair with one goal; join a student club.

The tables lining Huisache Hall advertised all kinds of clubs and organizations — an anime club, a military club, a cat club.

But one lonely table stood out to Lopez among the rest.

“I see one club that only has one person sitting at the table,” Lopez recalls. “So I go over to that club and I see that it’s the parent club. … I talked to [this person] — who I didn’t know was my adviser at the time — and I told her I was a parent myself.” 

Lopez, 27, was told that this brand-new club NVC Parent Club had no members and no officials yet. Before she knew it, she was emailing ideas for the club to her adviser and getting recruited to become its president.