At one point or another everyone has driven the circle of Downs Drive and seen the climbing structure located outside Wilson Hall. The jungle gym is not for the ARMY ROTC students to practice their warfare tactics. For 31 lucky parents, it is part of their child’s home away from home Monday through Friday from 6:00a.m-6:30p.m. But, for 14 not so lucky MWSU students it is a sore reminder that their child is playing in someone else’s backyard.

Y’s Kids World Early Learning Childhood Center has been providing childcare for the children of MWSU students, faculty and staff, YMCA employees and members of the community, since its opening in 1988. Students and faculty voiced the need that initially helped to get the center off the ground, said Dave Brown, Director of Counseling and Assistant Dean of Students who is also the liaison between Western and the St. Joseph Family YMCA.

“It was created out of need, by the students and faculty,” Brown said.

Students and faculty were running all over town to drop off their children before coming to school; they wanted a childcare on campus to save them time spent away from their children.

The center has now outgrown its small room in Wilson Hall.

“At the beginning of the spring semester I had to turn away 14 parents because we were full,” said Mary Nuckols, director of the Y’s Kids World.

The waiting list is seven months long.

“I always hate telling people that I don’t have room for their child.” Nuckols said “I’d like to offer more care but we only have so much space.”

Nuckols said Student Government Association President Harold Callaway approached her inquiring what could be done to help serve more students.

“I told him that we needed more space,”  Nuckols said.

The center cares for children ages two to 12 and who are toilet trained.

“I get a lot of calls from students who have small children,” Nuckols said. “I tell them to call me back when they are two and potty trained.”

Ashley Rainsbarger, senior at Western, leaves her 11-month-old daughter at a home-based center. Rainsbarger said by the time her daughter is old enough to go to the Y’s Kids World she will have graduated.
“We’re young students, we have young children,” Rainsbarger said it would make sense to offer care for the younger children.

Brown said safety plays a part in why they can’t offer care to infants.

 “We can’t have two and three-year-olds running around and tripping over small babies playing on the floor,” Brown said.

With the upcoming renovations to Agenstein Hall, Brown anticipates shifting of offices and classrooms will allow space to open to allow an expansion of Y’s Kids World. 

Brown isn’t the only one on campus who has eyes on helping the little ones expand their daily boundaries. Callaway said he has been co-chairing a committee with Dr. Estes, Dean of Professional Stud­ies, to create a new facility that would allow Y’s Kids World to expand.

The committee is intent on finding a solution to better help to meet the needs of all students.

“They need what everyone on campus needs; which is more space,” Callaway said.

He said the new facility would allow Y’s Kids World to increase its current enrollment to 100 students per day. The children would be separated into rooms according to their age development for safety concerns.
In addition to more space for the children, the proposed wellness facility would benefit students as well. “It will be two levels, with indoor basketball courts, weight room and an indoor track,” Callaway said. The wellness facility would be a place for students to workout in a more relaxed environment as many students steer away from using the Baker Family Fitness Center when the athletes are there.

“It’s a safety concern; people bumping into one another can cause accidents,” Callaway said of the sometimes crowded Baker facility.

Western students and faculty will hear more about this plan in the fall as it is currently in the design phase.
The voices of the parents whose children don’t fit in at Y’s Kids World have been heard loud and clear at Western.

 “I have seen more change come about on this campus that was initiated by the students,” Brown said.
Students need to step forward to show that there is a need for childcare for children under two and not toilet trained. If that happens, Brown said Western and the YMCA would return to the drawing board and redefine the mission of Y’s Kids World to better serve all the students.

Anything is do-able, as long as we can show there is a need,” Brown said.