Credit Hour

Head Start director Carmen Stewart discusses the Head Start program that provides children and their families free health, education and development services around the Vermillion community on this week’s Credit Hour podcast.Head Start has been housed within the University of South Dakota for the past 40 years. It is federally funded to help low-income families by offering education for parents and age-appropriate education for children ages 0-3 and 3-5.“The purpose of Head Start is to provide high-quality early childhood services to children for families who can’t afford it,” Stewart said. “Those children may be at risk and may not be as successful in school as children who come from more affluent families.”The partnership between Head Start and USD has seen successful outcomes.“There are opportunities for our program to work with experts on campus in a variety of fields: speech and language development, education, occupational and physical therapy, dental hygiene--we’re so fortunate to have experts if we ne