The Education Foundation of the Florida Federation of Business and Professional Womens Clubs Inc. will partner with St. Petersburg College and the St. Petersburg College Foundation to build a house for deserving female students, it was announced jointly today. It will be the first time the college, which has no dorms, has joined with a partner to provide residential housing.
The building will house 16 women who cannot afford the burden of paying both tuition and housing. While the exact location has not yet been determined, the building is expected to be located close to either SPCs St. Petersburg/ Gibbs campus or its Downtown Center. A search for a suitable site is now under way.
We are very excited about the prospect of being able to provide quality housing for women students who cant afford the cost of housing while going to school, said Susan Reiter, SPCs director of Facilities Planning & Institutional Services. This will be the first housing that SPC has been able to provide to students since the college was founded in 1927. Were delighted to be able to partner in this project with the Education Foundation of the Florida Federation of Business and Professional Womens Clubs.
Since the site has not yet been selected, a completion date for the home has not been determined. The Education Foundation and the college aim to have the first residents ready to move in sometime in 2009.
The Education Foundation of the Florida Federation of BPW Clubs, Inc. began its mission to provide college housing for deserving women in 1965 with its first venture at Florida State University in Tallahassee. That first facility offered housing to 21 women who possessed outstanding academic records and who demonstrated financial need.
From that beginning more than 40 years ago, the Education Foundation of the Florida Federation of BPW Clubs Inc., has worked toward its goal of providing a scholarship house to serve female students at every state-supported college and university in Florida. The women experience a cooperative living/learning environment. Students living in the scholarship houses pay nominal charges for housing and share such living expenses as food, housekeeping and utilities.
In addition, students in the Education Foundation scholarship houses have opportunities to meet members of local supporting BPW clubs. These members, who are business executives, entrepreneurs or consultants, provide mentoring and networking opportunities to the student residents. In the past, the students association with the women has resulted in internships and employment after graduation.
We recognized many years ago that there are many women in Florida who could excel in college if they simply had a good, safe, affordable place to live on or near campus, said Education Foundation president Christine Weigle, who is also a member of one of St. Petersburgs two BPW local organizations. It has been the dream of our members to provide that assistance in a true women-helping-women spirit.
Over the years, almost all money for construction has come from within the membership of the BPW clubs that support the Education Foundation, Weigle noted. Part of that fundraising effort involves a tradition known as Hawg Callin. At each regular meeting, BPW groups pass around a piggy bank to which individuals contribute money toward the scholarship houses. At the Education Foundations annual conference, members enthusiastically surrender their organizations piggy banks when the conference chairwoman calls in the hawgs.
The Education Foundation has also specified that the SPC scholarship house be built according to environmentally friendly or green standards and be accessible to individuals at all levels of physical ability, fully compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
The St. Petersburg College Foundation, which raises money to help make a college education possible for those who need financial assistance, also is partnering to help make the house a reality. SPC Foundation Director Paul Hanna said the house would be a major step toward higher education for deserving women.
The foundation is delighted to be able to partner with BPW and to help make this house a reality, Hanna said.
The SPC residential house will be the fourth such facility to be funded and built by the Education Foundation of the Florida Federation of BPW Clubs Inc. Besides the original house in Tallahassee, there are residences at the University of Central Florida in Orlando and at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.
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