Low-income undergraduate students will now have an additional way to pay for campus child care thanks to a grant Iowa State recently received from the U.S. Department of Education.

Iowa State was one of 222 colleges and universities nationwide and one of three Iowa universities to be awarded the Child Care Access Means Parents in School, or CCAMPIS, grant, said Jane Glickman, spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Education. Iowa State’s award was the highest in Iowa with a total of $89,312. The University of Iowa and Graceland University also received funds.

Julia Hagen, child care consultant for Iowa State Child Care Resources, played a primary role in writing and submitting the grant to the U.S. Department of Education last March.

“I just can’t say enough about this grant and how excited we are,” she said.

“We want to help as many students as we can and the grant should help to reduce their child care fees by about 50 percent.”

This would help relieve a tremendous financial burden on student parents, considering child care within a semester can cost more than a semester of tuition, she said.

CCAMPIS program goals include providing parent resources such as child-rearing and family information, lowering the long-term debt burden on student parents and helping to financially support student parents with regular child-care costs and with occasional and mildly-ill child-care services, Hagen said.

Parents can apply for grants if they have children attending one of three campus child-care centers, University Childcare Center at Veterinary Medicine, University Community Childcare at Pammel Court or the Comfort Zone at Pammel Court, according to a program brochure.

“We hope [the university] will use the grant to help parents going to school to afford quality on-campus child care that is convenient and near to them,” Glickman said.

Jerri Baumeister, director of the Center for Child Care Resources, 1038 Pammel Court, worked on the committee that helped to prepare the grant for submission to the Department of Education.

“Anything to help facilities make up the difference between what parents can afford to pay for child care and what the actual costs are is a wonderful thing,” she said.