How did the fund get started?
Mastroieni: We did the technology grant first, which was helping students who were not prepared to do online learning from a technological standpoint. So, maybe they didn’t have the right equipment or internet service they would need. It was to help students afford those items because they weren’t planning on [the expense] and it wasn’t part of their budget at that point. We offered a technology grant in spring and then fall of 2020 to help students through that transition.
And then in summer 2020, we offered a COVID emergency grant … to help students with expenses when they had to move and didn’t plan on that, and that’s an expensive undertaking. Or they had to make other changes in their lives that cost money outside of technology. And so, we offered that grant, and post-2020 it became apparent that students had ongoing emergency needs they were struggling with, and that these grant programs were really helpful. We looked for a way to do this in an ongoing basis and in March 2021 we rolled out the Graduate Emergency Fund program.
What void does this fill to make it different from what Student Intervention Services offers?
Mastroieni: The SIS Emergency Grants were designed specifically for undergraduate students, and they would occasionally help a grad student in dire need, but in general it was designed for undergraduate support. And in fact, some of the money comes from donations that are earmarked for undergraduates and can’t be used for grad students.
The other thing, I will say, is that Meredith and I are not involved in that fund, and so there are certain peculiar situations that a graduate or professional student might find themselves in that the folks running the undergraduate fund wouldn’t have been aware of. What might seem like an unnecessary need to them, we understood to be necessary. We had a med student who was in their later years lost or broke their iPhone; we understood that as a med student doing rounds, that’s an academic need. They need to be able to take texts and phone calls. Whereas that might not seem like an academic need to a second-year undergraduate student. Having us in the room to explain those things became helpful as we launched the Graduate Emergency Fund and brought in some of the same people in SIS to help. Helping with understanding the peculiarities of graduate education was useful.
Wooten: There are some people on the evaluation committee for the emergency fund that are the same. SIS is on both, but there is a different set of partners in the Graduate Emergency Fund that includes graduate financial aid counselors, as well as me and Anita right now. We have a better sense of the nature and the breadth of diversity in graduate student experiences.
So, everything from a one-year master’s student straight out of undergraduate to a more advanced Ph.D. student or someone coming back mid-career whose life and situation [may be different], particularly those with dependents. The other thing is, many of the sources of aid at the undergraduate level are funds earmarked for undergraduates, so the availability of smaller scholarships and ways that we’re able to support the undergraduates aren’t always available to graduate students. We have a better sense of resources available in individual schools. We also had to set up a slightly different process, because all our undergraduates when applying are submitting financial information and most of them who need aid are aided. A large proportion of our graduate students, either because they’re coming into a funded Ph.D. program, or are international students self-funded, or are just self-funded generally and we do not have financial data on file. There was no way to assess their need. We’d done that with the COVID-19 emergency funds, creating a structure for assessing student need in the absence of a FAFSA.
What is this fund not for?
Mastroieni: The fund is not for a cost-of-attendance expenses. Tuition, fees, and the sort of academic stuff one might need to be a graduate or professional student at Penn. For a design student, that might include all kinds of drafting materials. For engineering, that might include a specific high-powered laptop. Cost of attendance items are not included in the fund.
What we are trying to do is help students with unanticipated emergency expenses. Presumably, cost-of-attendance items you should be anticipating. But if you have a medical expense in the middle of the semester and your out-of-pocket costs are substantial and it was something you didn’t have the money in the bank for, we don’t want students, if they have loans, to use those for things other than academic needs. The emergency fund is meant to be used for unanticipated expenses that would prevent them from making progress or continuing in their program.
Wooten: The degree to which a cost should be anticipated plays heavily in how funds are distributed. If a student has an old laptop, they should expect as cost of attendance they will need at some point to replace that laptop. But if a student has something stolen or broken, we might cover that expense. It is about the idea of an unexpected, acute need. What is and what it isn’t covered is fuzzy because we do sometimes cover things that might look like cost of attendance, but it’s because something else occurred.
What are the future plans for the fund? Will this continue?
Mastroieni: Yes. It has highlighted the need among graduate students and we’re helping to meet those needs. The plan is to continue. The seed money originally came from the Provost’s Office, and GAPSA gave a generous donation toward the fund this year. We don’t anticipate this will go away.
Wooten: We were able to work with the Penn Giving site to create a gift fund for this. Now you can donate to it. That was created this year for those who want to donate to the emergency fund, and we hope to sustain the program that way for now. I can’t imagine not having it at this point, because of the need we’re serving. But I will say there’s been more need than we anticipated and we’re still working to hire staff to help with administering it. There is a plan to have someone to help administer it and that’s a permanent position.
Anything to add?
Wooten: The greatest need we see is unanticipated medical expenses, by far. We see students who we’ll assist if there’s a death in the family or a severe illness, or the need to travel last minute. And it’s a range: We helped students when we had hurricane flooding in Philadelphia, apartment fires, things stolen, and it runs the gamut after that. But overwhelmingly it’s travel, medical, and damaged [technology such as] computers or laptops.
