By Mary Ann Mason, Angelica Stacy, Marc Goulden, Carol Hoffman and Karie Frasch
UC Berkeley

The University of California system, like all institutions of higher education, is undergoing a fundamental shift in the demography of future faculty. As a significant portion of baby-boom faculty begins to retire over the next decade, new generations of incoming faculty will be evaluating universities in light of their “family friendliness.” To maintain and enhance its world-class reputation, UC recognizes that generous, flexible policies serving academics’ needs over the life course afford the best chance of attracting and keeping in the academic pipeline talented women and men who desire both successful careers and family lives.

In 2003, a $420,000 grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation enabled UC Berkeley co-principal investigators Mary Ann Mason, Dean of the Graduate Division, and Angelica Stacy, Associate Vice Provost for Faculty Equity, to launch the UC Faculty Family Friendly Edge initiative. An intense internal review of UC policies to help faculty members balance care-giving responsibilities with their careers led to expansion of a comprehensive package of innovative work-family policies and programs for ladder-rank faculty in its ten-campus system.

System-wide revisions to the family-accommodation policies, effective January 2006, include an additional term (semester or quarter) of teaching relief for birth mothers. The policy also provides guidance on the use of part-time faculty positions to address family needs. The use of tenure clock stoppage and the status known as Active Service-Modified Duties (previously available to men and women with a new baby or adopted child under age five, but only upon request) are now deemed entitlements. Moreover, use of the policies cannot be reflected negatively in faculty performance reviews.

In September 2006, the Berkeley and Davis UC campuses received a $250,000 Alfred P. Sloan Award to launch a proposed accelerator plan supporting career flexibility for tenured and tenure-track faculty. "This award will help us advance the important work we have already done with the help of the Sloan Foundation to implement the recently improved family-friendly policies throughout the University of California," said Angy Stacy.

Mary Ann Mason elaborated, "It's not enough for these progressive steps to be on the books. These policies have to be firmly embedded into the workplace culture to be effective."

The Accelerator Award will enable a major system-wide educational campaign to assure that faculty are aware of these policies and that the policies are being used equitably. Berkeley is developing an online chairs/deans “toolkit” for use by all UC campuses that details family accommodation policies and resources. "UC has been a leader in addressing faculty work/family issues and has one of the most comprehensive packages for family-friendly policies in the nation," said Carol Hoffman, manager of Work/Life, a University Health Services program for faculty and staff at UC Berkeley. "We hope that faculty will utilize the policies to help them be productive academically while also meeting family responsibilities."

UC Davis will continue to train its new chairs on these policies and also pilot a program in which tenured campus faculty serve as advisers for new and junior faculty. Said Binnie Singh, Director of Faculty Relations and Development at Davis, “This adviser program will help faculty who are new to the campus learn how to navigate the system and better understand what programs and policies are available to them.”

UC Berkeley’s Mary Ann Mason, co-PI Marc Goulden, Director of Data Initiatives in Academic Affairs, and Karie Frasch, Senior Research Analyst, are also continuing their research into obstacles to the professoriate that earlier resulted in the “Do Babies Matter?” publications, which helped focus nation-wide attention on the differential effects of family formation on the academic careers of women and men, and vice versa. With a new grant titled “Federal Grants and the Academic Pipeline,” the team is now exploring the role of federal funding in the academic careers of graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, soft-money researchers, and faculty. Despite the role that federal grants play in shaping graduate student and postdoctoral life in many disciplines of academia, federal funding structures and university policies related to such grants have yet to be thoroughly investigated for links to issues of family formation and the academic pipeline. This research project will provide findings on which to base solutions to leaks in the pipeline that result in the loss from the professoriate of talented academics with care-giving responsibilities.

For more information on the UC Faculty Family Friendly Edge and the “Do Babies Matter?” research, see http://ucfamilyedge.berkeley.edu/.