Vanderbilt University

The Spark

Vanderbilt’s child care program did not start with a strategic plan. It started with need. More than 40 years ago, a group of employee mothers organized a co-op because they had no other option. University administration recognized the value and began supporting it, and the program has been reaffirmed through every leadership transition since. When COVID shut down child care programs across the country, Vanderbilt made a deliberate decision to keep its center open, supplementing resources to make it work. More recently, during a catastrophic ice storm in Nashville, Vanderbilt kept the doors open. Parents arriving during that period, some without power, some from hotel rooms, were deeply grateful. For Pam Jones, Vanderbilt’s Associate Vice Chancellor for Health, Wellbeing, and Belonging, that moment captured what 40 years of institutional commitment looks like in practice.

The Solution

The Acorn School, operated through the Vanderbilt Child and Family Center, serves approximately 350 children ages six weeks through six years on the university’s campus. It is available to all Vanderbilt employees, faculty, and graduate students, subject to slot availability. For years the program maintained a waitlist, though recent operational improvements have brought access much closer to meeting demand.

Tuition is set near market rate and is reduced for lower salary-band employees and graduate students through a sliding-scale scholarship program. The goal, as Pam describes it, is to make the program approachable for everyone, The university subsidizes the center and has worked to build a sustainable business model that does not depend on maneuvering annual budgets to survive. That financial stability is a key reason the program has lasted four decades.

What sets Acorn apart from a typical employer child care center is the Peabody College connection. Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of Education and Human Development, consistently ranked the number one education school in the country, partners directly with the center on curriculum development and research translation. Evidence-based, nature-focused pedagogy is tested and refined in real classrooms with real children. The center’s director also is doctorally prepared. The dining program, run through Vanderbilt’s own Campus Dining team is intentionally designed to expose children to a wide range of foods rather than defaulting to the standard chicken tenders menu. The parent who manages the dining partnership took a personal interest in raising the standard because his own child attends the center.

The child care program sits within a broader benefits philosophy that Pam describes as holistic: enhanced mental health services (12 free visits per year, including for family members and children as young as two), a housing specialist for employees and international graduate students relocating to Nashville, elder care navigation resources, fertility coverage, adoption assistance, and expanded paid family leave. Child care is not a standalone perk. It is one pillar in a system designed to support the whole employee.

The Results

Pam is candid that the financial return on the child care investment is difficult to quantify precisely, and she believes that difficulty is exactly what makes most employers nervous about starting. But the qualitative evidence is strong. Faculty have cited the Acorn School as a factor in their decision to accept offers at Vanderbilt. The program almost certainly reduces sick time and unplanned absences, because parents with reliable, high-quality care close to campus do not face the same daily logistics crises that drive call-outs elsewhere.

The most telling data point may be the simplest: the program has survived and been reaffirmed for over 40 years, through multiple chancellors, CFOs, and economic cycles. During the recent ice storm, the center opened the day after the storm with limited hours because leadership knew families needed it. That kind of institutional durability does not happen with programs that fail to deliver value. It happens when a benefit becomes so embedded in the culture that removing it is unthinkable.