Wizard's Warehouse

Other TMCC Student Resources

• Community Resources for Students
  The Reno/Sparks area has numerous resources available to assist students with their specific needs including child-care, financial/legal, housing/shelter, transportation etc.
• Emergency Loans
  A TMCC student may apply for a 30-day educational expenses emergency loan if your fees have been paid or deferred.
• TMCC Counseling Center
  TMCC Counseling Center personnel are available to assist you with any questions about services or programs offered at TMCC.
• Financial Aid and Scholarships
  Student aid comes from the federal government, state government, and institution. It’s money that helps a student pay for college (i.e., tuition, books, supplies, transportation, and more).  

Helping Students in Poverty

You can help students living in conditions of scarcity by keeping in mind the following guiding principles (see also: ideas42.org's Poverty Interrupted Series).

Cut Costs

Poverty is expensive. Students living with low incomes often do not have bank accounts; unbanked individuals spend 3-5% each paycheck just to cash it. They often rely on public transportation and it may take a student 2 hours to get to TMCC by bus. Living in a chronic state of scarcity requires a lot of moment-to-moment problem solving which takes up a student’s attention. Cost cutting strategies include:

• Make communication clear and actionable.
• Increase access to course materials:
  • Provide information online or provide open access educational materials
  • Have texts and materials available on loan from the library
  • Use textbooks for multiple terms

Create Slack

Poverty is unforgiving. The resources of students living in scarcity are often stretched so much that there is no room for error or risk nor resources to cope with unanticipated events. Creating slack strategies include:

• Be unconditionally generous. For example, assume the student who is late encountered circumstances beyond his or her control rather than lacked the desire to arrive on time.
• Replace cliffs with slopes: an example would be to allow late work with point reductions rather than not accepting late assignments.
• Establish safeguards by allowing for extra credit, the ability to drop a low score, or other mechanisms to provide an opportunity for the student to recover when life interferes with learning.

Reframe and Empower

Students living with low incomes often struggle to believe they have the ability to affect change in their own life.

• Leverage positive identities by helping them to identify their successes.
• Treat students as the experts of their experience.
• Confront biases.
• Create plausible paths for success.

Add a Syllabus Statement

Faculty are encouraged to let students who are struggling to meet basic needs know about available TMCC resources. Please consider adding this statement to your syllabus:

Any student who faces difficulties securing their food or other necessities and believes this may affect their performance in the course is urged to connect with Wizard's Warehouse by emailing resources@tmcc.edu or calling or stopping by TMCC's Counseling Center (775-673-7060 or RDMT 325).

To discuss additional ways to assist students, contact the TMCC Student Resources Team.

Make a Donation

• TMCC Foundation Student Emergency Resource Fund

More Information About Hunger and College Students

Note: While Truckee Meadows Community College provides links to the following sites in support of our students, faculty and staff, these resources are provided for informational purposes only and do not constitute any endorsement or approval by TMCC.

• Food Security in the U.S. (U.S. Dept. of Agriculture)
• Assessing Food Insecurity on Campus (August 2017, Urban Institute)
• Food and Housing Report (2017, Community College Equity Assessment Lab)
• College and University Food Bank Alliance (CUFBA) (2016, Temple University)
• Colleges Are No Match for American Poverty (May 2018; The Atlantic)
• Still Hungry and Homeless in College (April 2018; Wisconsin HOPE Lab)
• NISOD Presentation: Helping Students Survive So They Can Succeed (May 2017)