The Office of the Dean of Students at BGSU provides students with resources that many are unaware of.
The Dean of Students provides students with financial, food and toiletry resources to make their time at BGSU more manageable.
To help with these funds, the office is always taking donations for shelf-stable and nonexpired food items, toiletry and other basic needs items, monetary donations and donated meal swipes. The office also holds specific drives for items they are in need of at the time.
Until April 1, they are holding a breakfast food drive to collect items like granola bars, cereal, oatmeal, pancake mix, peanut or nut butter, shelf-stable juice or milk and canned fruit. Students can drop off items in the Office of the Dean of Students’ lobby.
The Assistant Dean of Students for Student Care and Support, Abby Coon, focuses on resources to help students in a time of need, like the Student Emergency Fund which helps support students financially in a time of need.
“We do emergency funding for things like rent, car expenses, utility support, textbooks, required class supplies, grocery assistance and on-campus housing during breaks if they have nowhere safe to go to,” Coon said.
As long as the student is enrolled for the semester, they can apply for the fund whether living on or off campus. One of the only things that cannot be funded is medical bills, but students can request funding due to them.
“Maybe they had some medical bills pop up and they had budgeted all of their expenses accordingly, but now they were like, ‘I have a $200 medical bill. I am choosing between paying my rent or paying my medical bill,’” Coon said. “They can apply for emergency funding to help offset their rent.”
To apply for the funds, students just need to show proof that they are in financial need.
“You apply, submit your documentation showing that there’s a need and then once you’re approved, you get the funding and there’s no need to pay it back or anything like that,” Coon said.
The office also provides students with food assistance, like the Grab-N-Go Food Bag Program.
“That’s a bag of non-perishable grocery items that last students for about three meals a day for three days, give or take how students use them. So breakfast items, lunch items, dinner items,” Coon said.
The office also helps students with food assistance by providing swipes for the dining halls on campus.
“We have our Falcon Care cards, which are a collaboration that we do with dining,” Coon said. “They help us preload meal swipe cards that kind of act like a gift card to the Carillon or The Oaks and students can use that just like a swipe and there are five preloaded meal swipes on each card.”
The Office of the Dean of Students also has the Basic Needs Assistance Program, which provides students with resources based on the donations they receive.
“Shampoo, conditioner, body wash, laundry supplies, menstrual products, deodorant. Depending on the donations, sometimes like household items, like basic cooking equipment,” Coon said. “We also have some parenting student resources, so things like diapers and baby wipes. We also offer some pet food, things like that”
To receive these items, students can either fill out a form online or in person.
“The food assistance and the basic needs request form is all the same form,” Coon said. “The Office of the Dean of Students has drop-in hours from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Folks with an immediate need, can pop in and leave with those items that they need to, but they’ll still fill out the form just in person.”
Even if the office doesn’t have what a student needs, they have outside resources to help.
“We’re connected with some other off-campus partners, like some local thrift stores and things like that to provide financial assistance to those places so a coat or other needs could be acquired,” Coon said.
The Office of the Dean of Students wants students to come in asking for assistance because even if they can’t directly help, they will find a way to provide support.
“If there’s something that they need, please come let us know, because even if we don’t physically have it in that moment, we are connected to a lot of different places where we can probably help them find it or get them going in the right direction,” Coon said.
To find out how to apply for assistance, go to their website.
