Ellery Loomis, FAB chairman, said his organization is only looking at requests for fall 2007 on and could not fulfill all of the program's needs. Loomis said all requests for the summer must go through UPAC, which granted the subsidy $17,500 last summer to use over a slightly longer time period.
"There may never be a lapse in funding, [but] we didn't want to call [graduate students in June] and say, 'You will not have funding next week," Zezzo said. "We needed to give them months of time to find alternative sources of funding because it can be extremely difficult."
Zezzo will submit her appeal for $12,500 in summer funds to UPAC via teleconference tonight.
FAB will deliver its recommendation on fall funding to Vice President of Student Affairs Vicky Triponey before June 1. Triponey will make the final allocation decisions after the Penn State Board of Trustees meeting in July. Zezzo said she expects to know whether the additional funding from UPAC will be granted within a week.
The subsidy program supports about 300 student-parent families, providing partial funding for students with children to find a licensed, accredited child care facility. Undergraduate participants, who account for roughly 65 percent of the program's population, will receive undisrupted funding throughout the summer regardless of UPAC's allocation decisions.
Zezzo could not disclose how many students applied for subsidies at University Park, as applications are collected centrally and campus location is not considered in selection. She did say that more undergraduates in all 24 campuses have been applying for child care assistance than ever before, and that even if funding is granted, the program will still be unable to accommodate all the applicants.
"We have always had a waiting list for funding," Zezzo said. "I think that more adult students are going back to school ... they're starting college with children."
UPAC chairman Greg Heleniak said he could not predict what this year's funding decision would be. Defending the funding of a program that uses fees collected from the entire student body to support a small percentage, he said that very few activities funded by UPAC benefit all students.
"Is [the child care subsidy] potentially providing something for students on campus regardless of their number?" he asked. "Yes."
Zezzo agreed, saying that the subsidy program often makes or breaks an applicant's decision to come to Penn State.
"Many of the students I have spoken to attend this university because this program exists," she said.
