April 6, 2006 UC Families Newsletter Circulation: 738 Moderator: Karie Frasch email: ucfam@lists.berkeley.edu Website: http://parents.berkeley.edu/ucfamilies Post a Message: http://parents.berkeley.edu/post_ucfam.html MODERATOR NOTE: Our subscriber base for UC Families is continuing to grow, but more slowly outside of the bay area. If you are a subscriber at a non-Berkeley campus and know of others who may be interested in this newsletter please consider sending them the link to the website – http://parents.berkeley.edu/ucfamilies - or forwarding them the newsletter. Thank you. ---------------------------------------------- Contents ---------------------------------------------- *Responses Original post: Journalism school with wee ones? Original post: Babies matter – academia and family Original post: Strategies for Spousal Hire Original post: Changes to family accommodation policies for all UC ladder-rank faculty, effective immediately *New postings Insurance for grad students' families Babies and Fieldwork Repost: Going back to school with children? PI's opinion Finish? leave? overwhelmed 6th-year PhD student w/baby *News/media Study Blames Obstacles, Not Lack of Interest, for Shortage of Black and Hispanic Scientists *New members Since 3/26/06 ---------------------------------------------- *Responses ---------------------------------------------- You can post additional responses at: http://parents.berkeley.edu/post_ucfam.html Original post: Journalism school with wee ones? ------------------------------------------- It was interesting to read about combining kids with grad school in the recent posts, but I'm wondering about attending Berkeley's journalism school with kids -- anybody out there done that? Or one of the other professional schools? I've just received word that I've been accepted to the program and I'm very excited about the prospect of attending, but my daughter will be 2 in August and I'm due with baby #2 in June -- perhaps going right now is a crazy notion? My spouse is completely supportive and I'm hoping to tap into the family student housing and childcare, though frankly it all seems a bit daunting what with waiting lists and documentation galore. Let me know what you think. And thanks. Sierra Response: Journalism School ------------------------------------------- I attend another professional school on the UCB campus, and I say DO IT!!! My dept. is VERY understanding (I took this semester off to have baby #2) and while it does take an enormous amount of time management, it is worth it in every way. Having children forced me to really and truly focus on priorities; and while I don't get to do all the extracurricular activities I'd ideally love to do (seeing every speaker, going to every seminar and lecture outside of class, going to every social event) I do pick and choose a few that I'd like. It sounds like you have a supportive parter too, which is honestly what got me through school so far. You will deal with feeling like an outsider sometimes, but you will also have this sense of calm and peace about you that will keep you from getting to the level of stress that other people do (you gave birth, for god's sake, you can do ANYTHING!!!) about things that you know are relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Plus you get to make childless friends who need money and will babysit for you!!! Regarding housing and child care, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. We are in the East Village of family housing. I called at least once a week after submitting my app (do that NOW). We didn't get UC child care this year, but there are MANY people in the village who stay home with their kids who would love to watch others (that's what we did my first semester) for reasonable rates. Sorry this is so rambling. It's a topic I feel very strongly about. Feel free to email me if you have any other questions. Sarah Original post: Babies matter – academia and family ----------------------------------------------------- I have very much enjoyed reading the variety of thoughtful responses that have been posted regarding my ‘Babies Matter’ questions. It reminds me how important it is to have a venue for discussions that highlight the complexity of these issues for women and men who want to combine childrearing and academia. Now that additional family accommodations have recently become available to faculty with caregiving responsibilities, it will be important to publicize them, and to ensure that faculty feel comfortable using them. I was surprised that few graduate students weighed in on the dialogue, particularly in light of the fact that they are the next generation of women and men who will continue into faculty positions or opt for other choices. Age timelines for the receipt of the PhD continue to extend, so that the median age at PhD is now 33, and the median age at tenure is now 39 years of age. As many of you pointed out, it is becoming less and less an option for women faculty to postpone childbearing until after tenure. We must then do more to make childbearing feel like, and be a viable choice at the graduate level, as we are working to do at the assistant professor level. I hope that we can continue to engage in discussion on these valuable topics. Mary Ann Mason Response to Babies Matter from grad student ------------------------------------------- I have had two kids during grad school and they're great. In some ways grad school is a wonderful time to have kids--more flexibility etc. But there were two big issues for me: 1. It was definately hard financially. I had saved a little money for the first, but for the second, I'm relying too much on student loans-- at first, to be able to have some time at home and now to pay for childcare. I think I heard that Stanford is trying to do something about this, giving grad student parent grants for leave after a child is born, but only if they had fellowships the semester before. 2. I'm now on the job market and it's been very difficult. I know it's difficult for everyone, but I wonder if my CV doesn't look as good because of the time I spent caring for my children during grad school instead of teaching or being an RA every semester or doing other interesting paid work. I fulfilled all my program requirements on time, and so I thought it would be OK to care for my children some of the time that other students in my program were RAs or GSIs or did other work. Next year we'll probably be moving in with my mom because of all the debt along with the very real possibility that I won't have a job. But a faculty position is still the goal, and I'm lucky my husband is willing to go through all this with me! anonymous Original post: Strategies for Spousal Hire ------------------------------------------- I would be interested in hearing how UC faculty members with academic spouses have tried to obtain long-term employment for their spouse. I have spoken with the chair of my department about my situation (my spouse is interested in a permanent lecture position, not a tenure-track one in my department) and he has told me that he has communicated with my dean. But nothing concrete has happened. Have faculty in similar situations approached their deans directly or their offices of faculty equity? Or is the only strategy to go back on the academic job market for leverage? I have observed that the UC system policy regarding spousal employment is uneven. Although UC-conducted studies have acknowledged that this is a problem, I observe that some spousal hires are made, and some are not. My spouse has also been looking at UC resources such as HERC (which advertises academic positions in CA regions) to obtain employment elsewhere, but has been unsuccessful. Anon Response: strategies for spousal hires ------------------------------------------- As far as I know, UC Berkeley has no formal spousal hire policy. Furthermore its reluctance to hire couples places it far behind most major public research universities, while its low salaries and its relative geographic isolation make it much harder for such families than when at least one partner is teaching at one of the major private universities on the East Coast. Most spousal hires here, as far as I can tell, involve male full professors with much younger wives, many of whom are their former graduate students. These women include some of the most brilliant faculty in the university, but it is interesting to see how few spouses of female and/or relatively junior faculty appear to have been hired in comparison. I have the distinct impression that the campus's new and very welcome family-friendly policies were an effort to head off having to deal more directly with this issue as well as pay raises. anon Original post: Changes to family accommodation policies for all UC ladder-rank faculty, effective immediately -------------------------------------------------- On February 8, 2006, the President of the University of California announced major changes to family accommodation policies for ladder-rank faculty throughout the system. These changes, effective retroactively to January 1, 2006, provide for the first time, a comprehensive package of family friendly policies for women and men with caregiving responsibilities. One of the most significant changes to the family friendly package is the unambiguous message that faculty men and women, with substantial caregiving responsibilities, are entitled to the use of family accommodation policies, and may not be disadvantaged or prejudiced in promotions or advancement. The new family accommodations package is designed to support faculty over their life course. Birth mothers receive fully-paid childbearing leave. New parent caregivers, birth or adoptive, are entitled to a full term of ASMD; biological mothers receive a second term. The cost of replacement teachers is centralized to eliminate hardship for individual departments. Assistant professors who are new parents can automatically stop the tenure clock for one year (up to two years during the probationary period). All parents may at any time request up to a year of unpaid parental leave. And all faculty, pre- and post-tenure, may negotiate with their department to work part-time, temporarily or permanently, to accommodate their family needs. UC is now the leader among institutions of higher education in the United States on family friendly policies. While many other universities offer some of these policies, or additional ones we don’t have (such as a formal dual career program), none provide as comprehensive a package. What do you think about these changes? Do they go far enough? Will faculty feel safe using them when tenure and promotion are at stake? What must UC do to encourage faculty with caregiving responsibilities to take advantage of these policies? Will this persuade more women and men graduate students to pursue academic jobs at UC? Here is the link to the letter from President Dynes announcing the policies, and to the policy changes (the UC Families Newsletter is highlighted in his letter): http://www.ucop.edu/ucophome/coordrev/policy/PP020806APMs.pdf -UC Families Moderator Response: Not friendly enough towards adoptive families ------------------------------------------- UCs new family friendly policies represent a big step in the right direction, and I feel privileged to be a part of an institution that is on the forefront of creating a family friendly work environment. As an adoptive mother of a newborn, I also feel that the policies need to be fine-tuned further to address the complexities of non-biological family formation and, ultimately, to redress current imbalances in the treatment of biological vs. adoptive parents. The current policies accords biological mothers a fully paid childbearing leave followed by up to two terms of ASMD. Adoptive mothers, by contrast, are entitled to merely one term of ASMD. In essence, this means they are treated like fathers, and no longer like other women in the system -- a serious equity issue in my view. Biological reproduction and adoption are just two different ways of forming a family, each involving some distinct labors and stresses. The current policy registers those of biological mothers disproportionately while it altogether elides those of adoptive mothers. More often than not adoptive women have undergone a tremendous amount of medical treatment to get pregnant the conventional way before they turn to adoption. Adoption itself is a long, labor-intensive and psychologically taxing process, involving reams of paperwork, dealing with various bureaucracies, and often also failed matches with prospective adoptive children. It makes no sense to me that women who become mothers in this manner because they were unable not unwilling! -- to reproduce biologically should not receive a fully paid leave, especially when adopting a newborn. Even if adoptive mothers do not have to deal with the recovery from the physical strains of birth, the intensity of newborn care remains the same and the need for undisturbed infant bonding is arguably even more important in cases of adoption. For the same reason, adoptive moms should be eligible for up to two terms of ASMD just like biological moms. I personally was lucky to have a Chair and a Dean who understood this and supported my request to arrange a full leave followed by one term of ASMD. Such matters, however, should not be left up to foresight (or lack thereof) of individuals. They should be written into UC policies and made available to everyone in the system. ---------------------------------------------- *New postings ---------------------------------------------- You can post a response message: http://parents.berkeley.edu/post_ucfam.html Insurance for grad students' families ------------------------------------------- Recently in recruiting a potential grad. student, I discovered that Berkeley is at a disadvantage when it comes to providing health insurance for spouses, domestic partners and children of graduate students. Apparently, we provide only a link to private insurance plans. Yale (from which this student also had a good offer) provides an optional health insurance package for families of graduate students. The students pay extra, but at below market rate. Shouldn't a family friendly university system include this in its package of benefits? How expensive is additional coverage and how do grad. students across the campus pay for it? Babies and Fieldwork ------------------------------------------- Hello - I have a 7 month old son, and plan on taking my QE's next spring, when he'll be about a year and a half old. Students in my department without children usually take a year abroad after their QE's to do research. I'm wondering if any of you have experience with taking very young kids abroad. I would be going to do library and museum research in a clean, modern city, so I'm not worried about taking my son there for any health or safety reasons. Mostly I'm worried about what my spouse will do. Should I expect him to come with us (he could take a year of leave from work, or even retire early)? Or will he be miserable in a foreign country where he isn't working and I've got my own thing going? Or, should I just take my son and expect my husband to come visit? I guess a third option would be for me to just go alone. I'm wondering how other people have handled this and what the pros and cons have been. Thanks! Elisabeth Repost: Going back to school with children? PI's opinion ------------------------------------------- I am a lab tech at Plant & Microbial Biology Dept, UCB. I started this job without no science backgrounds and have been in the same lab for 5 years. I really like this job as my career and am very interested in biology. Although it was not easy, I have achieved so many technical skills, but I have been realizing that I need more academic aspects. Now I am very unclear what to do. I have 2 children (8 and almost 6), and I am in mid-30's. I really want to go back to school, preferably for ph.D but I am not sure how realistic this idea can be. So I would like to hear opinions especially from PIs. I would like to know what kind of options I could have. I also will appreciate the experiences from people who went back to school with young children. Rie Finish? leave? overwhelmed 6th-year PhD student w/baby ------------------------------------------ Relevant recent discussion from the Berkeley Parents Network ‘Advice Wanted’ newsletter: http://parents.berkeley.edu/advice/allkinds/gradbaby.html#fin ------------------------------------------ *Articles and media ------------------------------------------ You can post comments or discussion points about any of these, or offer new ones - http://parents.berkeley.edu/post_ucfam.html Study Blames Obstacles, Not Lack of Interest, for Shortage of Black and Hispanic Scientists Chronicle of Higher Education, By PETER SCHMIDT, Tuesday, April 4, 2006 http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=f6kYjsq8qqvHDYfcbMTbSG4HxsMnzvqD --------------------------------------------------------------------- - Post a message * http://parents.berkeley.edu/post.html - Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Address Changes, Help * http://parents.berkeley.edu/subscribers.html