Belk Center to lead research and evaluation for North Carolina Dual Ascent
This week, the Belk Center for Community College Leadership and Research (Belk Center) announced it will be serving as the research and evaluation partner for North Carolina Dual Ascent.
Sign up for Awake58, our newsletter on all things community college.
What is North Carolina Dual Ascent?
In 2025-26, EdNC conducted research on how community colleges are expanding childcare access and affordability in three primary ways: providing on-campus childcare options; utilizing state grants to help students afford care; and strengthening the childcare workforce, including fast-track options like childcare academies.
You can see all of our research here. This research built on EdNC’s blitz of all 58 community colleges in 2022, where we studied the role of the community college system in preparing the early education teacher workforce and providing childcare to students and communities.
In June 2026, EdNC supported a convening for stakeholders and philanthropists called the “Dual Ascent Design Day,” which included a memo on possible policy solutions and a briefing prepared by the EdNC team.
In July 2026, the N.C. State Board of Community Colleges approved $3,038,215 to support the North Carolina Community College Child Care Grant program. To ensure the complete utilization of funds going forward, the system changed how it administers the state appropriation.
Each community college participating in the Child Care Grant program will receive an award based on its program expenditures from the previous year. Institutions that did not expend any Child Care Grant funds during the prior year will receive a base allocation of $5,000. The System Office will retain a balance of $447,703 to reallocate to colleges upon request once the college has expended its allocated funding. If a college does not participate in the program or projects unexpended funds, their available funds will be redistributed to participating colleges. The System President will have the authority to reallocate funds as needed during the program year to ensure full utilization of funds.
— Board materials
Here you can see the recommended childcare grant allocations by college for 2026-27.
Since then, in September 2026, the N.C. State Board of Community Colleges approved the creation of a full-time, three-year time limited position at the system office dedicated to expanding access to affordable, high-quality childcare for community college student parents. The role will encompass statewide coordination, grant administration, technical assistance, data collection, partnership development, and more.
The position is funded through two, three-year philanthropic awards totaling $500,666.67 to the N.C. Community Colleges System Foundation from the Child Trust Foundation and other funders.
“Access to affordable, high-quality childcare is really the difference between if the student parent can stay enrolled and complete a credential or have to stop out because of circumstances outside of the classroom,” said Dr. Brian Merritt, senior vice president and chief academic officer for the NCCCS.
Merritt said about EdNC’s research, “The main thing that they heard across our colleges, across our system, across state agencies, was we do not have a point person here at the system that is the voice of childcare access and innovation.” The funding for the position changes that moving forward.
A grant to the Belk Center to fund their role as research and evaluation partner is the next step in the state’s commitment to Dual Ascent.
In total, since the “Dual Ascent Design Day,” there have been more than $1.2 million in philanthropic investments to date.
EdNC’s news and research
The leadership of the Belk Center
The announcement by the Belk Center says:
Across North Carolina’s 58 community colleges, thousands of students balance the dual responsibilities of earning a postsecondary credential and raising children. For these student-parents, reliable and affordable child care often makes the difference between persisting to graduation or stepping away from their education. Investing in parenting students is a significant two-generation strategy: when a parent completes a degree, it directly strengthens educational outcomes and long-term opportunities for their children.
To help colleges, policymakers and state partners systematically identify, support and scale effective solutions for parenting students, the Belk Center for Community College Leadership and Research (Belk Center) is serving as the research and evaluation partner for the North Carolina Dual Ascent Project.
Made possible through the generous support of The Leon Levine Foundation, Dual Ascent will establish a validated, statewide evidence base on student-parent experiences and build institutional capacity across the North Carolina Community College System (NCCCS). The program aims to inform actionable policies, maximize the impact of state resources and lay the groundwork for scalable, campus-based child care supports in future phases.
Building a statewide evidence base
While child care is recognized as both a critical family support and a vital driver of workforce development, higher education leaders across the state have lacked comprehensive, reliable data regarding the full scope and needs of parenting students. Existing data sources, such as FAFSA data, often undercount student-parents and leave critical gaps in understanding their day-to-day challenges.
Beginning in fall 2026, Dual Ascent will integrate three core initiatives to build a robust foundation for statewide decision-making:
- A statewide student-parent survey | The Belk Center will execute a survey to establish a validated baseline of student-parent needs. This effort includes student incentives to boost participation, student focus groups, and a cost-benefit analysis to show how the North Carolina Child Care Grant supports student-parents.
- Parenting Student Advisory Board (PSAB) | To ensure strategy is guided by lived experience, a stipend-supported, regionally representative council of student-parents drawn from survey and focus group volunteers will meet regularly throughout the year. Serving as co-architects of the project, PSAB members will help interpret research findings and ground future recommendations in their lived experiences.
- Community of Practice cohort | Bringing together leadership teams from 10 to 15 North Carolina community colleges — including presidents, campus child care leads and student success staff — this cohort will convene to analyze local barriers, compare child care models and help shape the next phase of this work.
Driving impact through collaboration
Achieving lasting change for student-parents requires a strong connection between national research and local North Carolina needs. The project weaves in local and national expertise, collaborating closely with key partners — including the NCCCS System Office, the NCCCS Student Success Center, the NC Department of Commerce, EdNC, the Urban Institute and Jobs for the Future — to ensure this work translates directly into actionable policy and support for campuses.
“We know that child care and family support are vital to student persistence, retention and economic mobility,” says A.J. Jaeger, executive director of the Belk Center. “Through this partnership with The Leon Levine Foundation, Dual Ascent allows us to pair robust research directly with student and community college leadership insights to advance a powerful two-generation approach.”