Statement of principles on family responsibilities and academic work

Academe

Volumn 87, Issue 5, 2001, Pages 55-61

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EID: 0039888221     PISSN: 01902946     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
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References (30)

1. Robin Wilson, "Percentage of Part-Timers on College Faculties Holds Steady after Years of Big Gains," Chronicle of Higher Education, 23 April 2001.
2. Marcia Bellas, AAUP Faculty Salary and Faculty Distribution Fact Sheet, 2000-01 (April 2001), .
3. Jane Waldfogel, "The Effect of Children on Women's Wages," American Sociological Review 62 (1997): 209. Similarly, 81 percent of men become fathers at some point in their lives. See Nancy E. Dowd, Redefining Fatherhood (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 22. Men, however, do not give birth, and some become fathers at later ages, some even after retirement.
4. Jane Waldfogel, "The Effect of Children on Women's Wages," American Sociological Review 62 (1997): 209. Similarly, 81 percent of men become fathers at some point in their lives. See Nancy E. Dowd, Redefining Fatherhood (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 22. Men, however, do not give birth, and some become fathers at later ages, some even after retirement.
5. Robert Drago and Joan Williams, "A Half-Time Tenure-Track Proposal," Change (November-December 2000): 47-48.
6. Ibid.
7. Cornell University provides an example of such an institutional commitment: "Cornell University is committed to policies, practices, and programs supportive of the members of its diverse community as they traverse the interlocking worlds of work and family. The University encourages, at all levels, an environment which is supportive of and sensitive to the needs and mutual dependence of the workplace and working families." See .
8. Lotte Bailyn, Breaking the Mold: Women, Men, and Time in the New Corporate World (New York: Free Press, 1993), 51.
9. This section incorporates portions of the text of the AAUP's 1974 Leaves of Absence for Child-Bearing, Child-Rearing, and Family Emergencies.
10. Similarly, the School of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology provides that the school "will normally offer a one-semester release from teaching and administrative activities at full pay to faculty members who act as the primary caretaker at home for a new child." The University of Michigan also provides for "modified duties for childbearing," which enable a faculty member to recover fully from the effects of pregnancy and childbirth by allowing a pregnant faculty member, on request to her dean, [to] be granted a period of modified duties without a reduction in salary. At a minimum, modified duties means relief from direct teaching responsibilities for the academic term that includes the actual sick leave time the faculty member expects to take in connection with the birth. This policy is available to non-tenured as well as tenured faculty, but is available only in conjunction with pregnancy or childbirth. The tenure clock is not stopped during the period of modified duties unless the faculty member also has an appointment of less than 80 percent during the time she is on modified duties.
11. For example, the Wayne State University AAUP-AFT collective bargaining agreement (1999b-2002) provides for modified duty assignments at full or partial pay, depending on whether a full or reduced teaching load is arranged.
12. The AAUP statement On Crediting Prior Service Elsewhere as Part of the Probationary Period (1978) recognizes that "in specific cases the interests of all parties may best be served through agreement at the time of initial appointment to allow for more than four years of probationary service at the current institution (but not exceeding seven years), whatever the prior service elsewhere." Just as adjustments may be made to the probationary clock regarding prior service, so, too, should institutional policies allow for adjustment of the probationary period for the "specific cases" of faculty members who are primary or coequal caregivers to newborn or newly adopted children.
13. As Susan Kolker Finkel and Steven G. Olswang have noted, the traditional tenure system was based on a model designed for men who were professors with wives at home caring for children. See Finkel and Olswang, "Child Rearing as a Career Impediment to Women Assistant Professors," Review of Higher Education 19 (1996): 130. Accordingly, few of the early women professors married or had children. See Jessie Bernard, Academic Women (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1964). In 1973 the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education wrote: Probably the most serious handicap facing married women desirous of a teaching career in higher education, especially in research-oriented universities, is that in the very age range in which men are beginning to achieve a reputation through research and publication, 25 to 35, married women are likely to be bearing and rearing their children. Opportunities for Women in Higher Education; Their Current Participation, Prospects for the Future, and Recommendations for Actions (New York: McGraw Hill, 1973), 139-40.
14. As Susan Kolker Finkel and Steven G. Olswang have noted, the traditional tenure system was based on a model designed for men who were professors with wives at home caring for children. See Finkel and Olswang, "Child Rearing as a Career Impediment to Women Assistant Professors," Review of Higher Education 19 (1996): 130. Accordingly, few of the early women professors married or had children. See Jessie Bernard, Academic Women (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1964). In 1973 the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education wrote: Probably the most serious handicap facing married women desirous of a teaching career in higher education, especially in research-oriented universities, is that in the very age range in which men are beginning to achieve a reputation through research and publication, 25 to 35, married women are likely to be bearing and rearing their children. Opportunities for Women in Higher Education; Their Current Participation, Prospects for the Future, and Recommendations for Actions (New York: McGraw Hill, 1973), 139-40.
15. As Susan Kolker Finkel and Steven G. Olswang have noted, the traditional tenure system was based on a model designed for men who were professors with wives at home caring for children. See Finkel and Olswang, "Child Rearing as a Career Impediment to Women Assistant Professors," Review of Higher Education 19 (1996): 130. Accordingly, few of the early women professors married or had children. See Jessie Bernard, Academic Women (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1964). In 1973 the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education wrote: Probably the most serious handicap facing married women desirous of a teaching career in higher education, especially in research-oriented universities, is that in the very age range in which men are beginning to achieve a reputation through research and publication, 25 to 35, married women are likely to be bearing and rearing their children. Opportunities for Women in Higher Education; Their Current Participation, Prospects for the Future, and Recommendations for Actions (New York: McGraw Hill, 1973), 139-40.
16. Nor did the traditional tenure system take into account the increased likelihood of medical problems associated with delayed child-birth or the age-related obstacles to adoption. See Amy Varner, "The Consequences and Costs of Delaying Attempted Childbirth for Women Faculty" (2000) and Joan Yang, "Adoption Issues for Faculty" (2000), .
17. Nor did the traditional tenure system take into account the increased likelihood of medical problems associated with delayed child-birth or the age-related obstacles to adoption. See Amy Varner, "The Consequences and Costs of Delaying Attempted Childbirth for Women Faculty" (2000) and Joan Yang, "Adoption Issues for Faculty" (2000), .
18. In 1995 the median age for the completion of a Ph.D. was thirty-four, which places the age of tenure at around forty and thus, "[a]sking women to delay having children until such a late age seems unfair and unkind, and involves health and infertility risks." Drago and Williams, "A Half-Time Tenure-Track Proposal."
19. A recent University of Michigan report found that the university's "women assistant professors were more likely than men either to have children prior to beginning their academic careers or to delay child bearing and rearing until after they receive tenure or until they are well established in their careers." University of Michigan Faculty Work-Life Study Report (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Regents of the University of Michigan, 1999), 18.
20. In a survey of 124 women assistant professors in 1996, 43 percent viewed time required by children as a serious impediment to tenure; among those with children under age six, the figure rose to 82 percent. Finkel and Olswang, "Child Rearing as a Career Impediment to Women Assistant Professors," 133.
21. "Leadership campuses" are defined as the ninety-four campuses that were in the top 25 percent of respondents to a survey on "family-friendly" policies conducted by the College and University Personnel Association (CUPA). The report found that "these policies were put into effect in order to recognize that circumstances beyond the faculty member's control may hinder the performance of responsibilities such as teaching, research, and service to the school or community." Dana E. Friedman et al., The College and University Reference Guide to Work-Family Programs (Washington, D.C.: CUPA Foundation, 1996), 120.
22. A growing number of institutions of higher learning already provide policies that extend the pretenure clock without requiring the faculty member to be on leave. For example, the University of Michigan faculty handbook provides for automatically stopping the tenure clock upon faculty request for up to one year for child rearing: "The one-year exclusion for pregnancy, childbirth, and related medical conditions is automatic on request, but requests must be made prior to the initiation of the tenure review." Similarly, the University of California policy provides that "the Chancellor may grant to a faculty member who has substantial responsibility for the care of a newborn child or newly adopted child under the age of five up to one year off the tenure clock for each birth or adoption, provided that all time off the tenure clock totals no more than two years. . . . [T]he campus will accept no requests to stop the tenure clock after the tenure review has begun."
23. One survey found that of those higher education institutions that offer "stop-the-tenure-clock" policies, "nine out often allow the exclusion of up to two semesters." See Friedman et al., The College and University Reference Guide to Work-Family Programs. The University System of Georgia recently amended its board of regents policies on tenure to "enhance the family-friendly work environment." In so doing, it adopted a stop-the-tenure-clock policy that provides that "the total time granted for suspension of the tenure clock . . . shall not ordinarily exceed two years."
24. The 1997-2000 Master Agreement between Northern Michigan University and the university's AAUP chapter provides that "the taking of [family] leave shall not otherwise prejudice future tenure or promotion consideration." Similarly, Pennsylvania State University's policy provides that a "staying of the provisional tenure period should not penalize or adversely affect the faculty member in the tenure review." In addition, the University of Wisconsin policy provides that if "the faculty member has been in probationary status for more than seven years, the faculty member shall be evaluated as if he or she had been in probationary status for seven years, not longer."
25. This section incorporates the substance and most of the text of AAUP's 1989 statement Faculty Child Care. 19. In 2001 there were approximately 2,500 campus-based child care centers in the United States, according to the National Coalition for Campus Children's Centers.
26. Elder-care responsibilities appear to fall most heavily on tenured professors, especially tenured women faculty. Thirty-seven percent of employees who assume elder-care responsibilities are fifty or older. See James T. Bond, Ellen Galinksy, and Jennifer E. Swanberg, 1997 National Study of the Changing Workforce (New York: Families and Work Institute, 1997).
27. According to the National Academy on Aging, 72.5 percent of all informal caregivers are women. See Amy Varner and Robert Drago, "The Changing Face of Care: The Elderly" (2000), . Accordingly, career advancement may be jeopardized by such caregiving responsibilities, including the continued advancement of women faculty. See M. M. Robinson, B. L. Yegidis, and J. Fun, Faculty in the Middle: The Effects of Family Caregiving in Universities, Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, Working Paper 296 (Wellesley, Mass., 1999).
28. According to the National Academy on Aging, 72.5 percent of all informal caregivers are women. See Amy Varner and Robert Drago, "The Changing Face of Care: The Elderly" (2000), . Accordingly, career advancement may be jeopardized by such caregiving responsibilities, including the continued advancement of women faculty. See M. M. Robinson, B. L. Yegidis, and J. Fun, Faculty in the Middle: The Effects of Family Caregiving in Universities, Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, Working Paper 296 (Wellesley, Mass., 1999).
29. The University Park campus of Pennsylvania State University and the town of State College, for example, coordinate their spring breaks to enable faculty parents to care for their children during the break. See Final Report to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Pennsylvania State University, Work-Family Working Paper 01-01 9 (State College, Pa., 2001).
30. A 1996 study found that two-thirds of women and close to one-third of men experienced family difficulties when faculty meetings were scheduled after 5 P.M. on weekdays or during the weekend. See Linda P. Fried et al., "Career Development for Women in Academic Medicine," Journal of the American Medical Association 898 (1996).