Time for Breastfeeding
September 28th, 2007From “Inside Higher Ed:”
“An appeals court in Massachusetts ruled Wednesday that a breast-feeding mother who is a student at Harvard Medical School is entitled to extra time during a licensing exam so she can pump milk for her child, The Boston Globe reported.”
This story marks the first time I’ve been grateful for the format of my all-day, at-home PhD qualifying exams: the exams were, at the very least, very breastfeeding-friendly.
Good News from Rutgers
August 21st, 2007We’re proud to note today that the university associated with our publisher, Rutgers, is making family life easier for their faculty:
Eight weeks paid leave from teaching and service obligations for both faculty and TA/GAs of any gender who become parents (biological or adoptive). For birth mothers, these eight weeks are in addition to the previous contract’s six weeks of paid disability leave, resulting in fourteen weeks—an entire semester—of paid leave.
They’ve negotiated a host of other benefits, too. Read the whole story over at the AAUP website.
Making Academic Life Easier for Families
June 28th, 2007American Public Media’s Marketplace program recently ran a program on Higher Education Recruitment Consortiums (HERCs), organizations of schools within a region that share information about job openings, in order to recruit and keep candidates who have a spouse or partner’s career to consider, too. The goal of the regional HERCs (here’s a link to New England’s) is to help keep families together.
We’d love to see the end of the academic commuter marriage; tell us, Mama PhDs, have you used an HERC?
Make Your Voice Heard!
June 7th, 2007Suniya Luthar, Professor of Clinical and Developmental Psychology Columbia University’s Teachers College, is gathering responses to a survey of Moms as People. Take some time to reflect on your experience and convey how this work affects your life. You can find the survey here.
More Good News
April 25th, 2007I love posting these updates! Check out the article in today’s Inside Higher Education with its wrap-up of changes at the University of Kentucky, Kenyon College, Standford, Princeton and Yale to make those schools more family-friendly for graduate students and faculty.
Good news for Berkeley Graduate Students!
April 13th, 2007Berkeley’s Dean Mary Ann Mason is at the forefront in making the university a more family-friendly place, and we’re glad to read of this great new benefit for UCB graduate students. I hope that soon graduate students throughout the U.C. system can enjoy a paid maternity leave.
Women doctoral students at Berkeley who hold fellowships or academic appointments as graduate-student instructors or researchers will soon be eligible for six weeks’ paid maternity leave under a childbirth-accommodation provision passed March 5 by the Graduate Council. The policy, which takes effect in fall 2007, builds on the campus’s suite of family-accommodation measures for faculty — such as teaching-duty relief and tenure-clock stoppage for faculty parents of young children — by “pushing it down to the doctoral-student level,” says Graduate Dean Mary Ann Mason.
By Cathy Cockrell, Public Affairs
Good News for Graduate Students
April 7th, 2007Princeton University has just announced a new package of benefits designed to make family life easier on their graduate students. The benefits include 3 months of paid maternity leave (along with extensions of academic fellowships and deadlines); child care support; additional funds to pay for childcare; and even mortgage assistance.
Let’s hope other schools quickly follow Princeton’s lead!
Bring the Kids!
March 20th, 2007OK, so you’re a mama, and you’re in graduate school, or maybe you’re a professor, and you’re managing, with an intricate system of childcare arrangements, to teach, to research, and mother your child. As long as no one gets sick, and no one reschedules a meeting at the last minute, and no one’s car breaks down, you manage to meet your professional and personal obligations. When you’re at home, it all works.
But what about when you have to attend a conference? What do you do? What if your child’s still nursing or just too young to leave at home, or you can’t cobble enough childcare to leave your older child? Wouldn’t it be great if you could bring your child, knowing that quality childcare is provided at the conference site?
Of course it would be, and for those attending the Association of Jewish Studies annual conference, it is! Read more about it in Mama, Ph.D. contributor, Megan Pincus Kajitani’s article in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Motherhood: The Elephant in the Laboratory
November 1st, 2006In the interest of reading more stories about how women attempt to combine family and work life, I’m posting this call for papers. Please respond to Emily Monosson at the email address below for more information.
I am editing a book about women, science and family, tentatively
titled Motherhood: The Elephant in the Laboratory. I think the time is right for women to speak out about their different experiences, opportunities and personal choices as mothers and as scientists.
I am currently collecting essays. If you are interested in contributing and would like more information please respond to:
emonosson@verizon.net.
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