University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Chancellor's Committee on the Status of Women
Annual Report
2002-2003
Submitted by:
Kathryn H. Anthony
Professor, School of Architecture
Associated Faculty, Department of Landscape Architecture
Associated Faculty, Women's Studies Program
Chair, CCSW, 2002-2003
TABLE OF CONTENTS |
||
I. |
Committee Membership List |
|
II. |
Overview | |
III. |
CCSW Commitment to Action Chart | |
IV. |
A Proposal for Part-time Tenure-Track Faculty Appointments on the Urbana Campus | |
V. |
Campus Restroom Condition Survey | |
VI. |
Agenda and Minutes of All Meetings | |
VII. |
APPENDIX A | |
VIII. |
APPENDIX B |
| Officio Members: | |
|
|
| ____________________________________________ | ___________________________________________ |
| Ex-Officio Members: | |
|
|
During the 2002-2003 Academic Year, the Chancellor's Committee on the Status of Women worked to improve women's status on campus. The Committee addressed these issues throughout the year:
-
Exploring flexible appointment structures for faculty, including the possibility of part-time tenure-track positions
-
Analyzing deficiencies and improvide the state of women's restrooms across campus
-
Overseeing the faculty mentoring initiative developed in 2001-2002
The Committee was routinely kept apprised of additional issues addressed by other committees on campus, including:
-
Updating concerns raised by the Rape Awareness and Prevention Committee
-
Monitoring issues and activities surrounding childcare facilities
-
Monitoring the status report on undergraduate women
-
Monitoring the implementation of recommendations from the Diversity Initiatives Committee and the Gender Equity Committee
-
Monitoring Faculty Excellence, TOPPS, and other new hires
A CCSW Commitment to Action chart is included in this report. It summarizes the actions and strategies to be taken, the delegated committee members responsible for each issue, an implementation timeline, and the next steps to be taken in the future.
Two reports are included here that provide detailed information about the Committee's work on two major issues.
-
A proposal for Part-Time Tenure-Track Faculty Appointments on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Campus
-
Campus Restroom Condition Survey
The agenda and minutes of each meeting are attached.
III. CCSW Commitment to Action Chart
IV. A Proposal for Part-time Tenure-Track Faculty Appointments on the Urbana Campus
SIGNIFICANCE
Chancellor Nancy Cantor has identified a need to recruit and retain more women faculty on the UIUC campus. On September 24, 2002 she charged the Chancellor's Committee on the Status of Women with a study of this issue, specifically, to identify other academic institutions that have flexible faculty appointment policies, to provide sample policies from these institutions, and to make recommendations for how our campus should proceed.
THE PROCESS
CCSW Chair Kathryn Anthony appointed three committee members to complete this task: Lynda Cabrales, Jennifer Chung, and Lakeisha Johnson, with Kal Alston serving as consultant. Kathryn Anthony and Kathleen Pecknold followed up with questions to specific institutions, and Kathryn Anthony and Lakeisha Johnson wrote the final version of this report. This issue was discussed at all seven CCSW meetings during the 2002-03 year.
Committee members gathered information by conducting a literature review of academic publications, searching through university web sites and faculty handbooks, and follow-up phone calls with key university personnel. Sources consulted in the literature review are included in the attached bibliography; relevant web sites are included in the appendix.
In addition, four guests were invited to CCSW meetings to address the committee about this issue. The first guests arrived on January 28, 2003: Associate Professor Susan Larson, Director of Women in Engineering and faculty member in Civil and Environmental Engineering, and David Daniel, Dean of the College of Engineering. They discussed a proposal recently submitted to the National Science Foundation (NSF) that included provisions for part-time tenure track faculty appointments for the College of Engineering. Both Professor Larson and Dean Daniel expressed their strong support for such flexible appointment structures. They stated that whether the NSF proposal was funded or not, they were firmly committed to offering such appointments to engineering faculty in the future.
The second guest on January 28, 2003 was Visiting Assistant faculty member from the College of Fine and Applied Arts. This faculty member, whose husband is a tenure-track faculty member in the college, recently requested a spousal hire. The same professor appeared before the CCSW again on April 1, 2003, when she reported that she was successful in obtaining the part-time tenure track appointment that she had discussed with us earlier. Because University policy would have to be changed to extend the tenure clock, the tenure clock was not extended beyond the usual six years. However, tenure clock for the professor will begin in Fall 2004, by which will begin a 75% time appointment, with a 66% time teaching appointment. The professor was given support for a Research Assistant for two years. She aims to covert her appointment into 100% once she obtains tenure.
The fourth guest was Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Richard Herman, who appeared before the CCSW on April 1, 2003. He provided statistics about the percentage of women faculty currently on the UIUC campus and argued that UIUC needs to retain more. He pointed to a few academic units that have been exceptionally successful at recruiting women faculty, including the Depts. of Chemistry, Computer Science, and the College of Engineering, where, in 2001-02, nine tenure-track offers to women faculty were made, and four accepted. He was in strong support of changing the culture across campus to encourage more academic units to see the value in offering flexible faculty appointments. He suggested that a few academic units be targeted to consider offering such appointments in the near future, thus serving as a prototype for the rest of the campus.
RESULTS
Web Site Searches
Results from the web sites and follow-up phone calls are shown in the Appendix A. Of the 28 colleges and universities examined, 12 were from the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC), 15 were from elsewhere.
A total of seven schools, including four from the CIC, have part-time tenure track policies in place. The four CIC schools included: University of Iowa, University of Minnesota, Ohio State University, and University of Wisconsin-Madison. Others offering part-time tenure track appointments were Calvin College, University System of Maryland, University of Vermont. Phone calls to academic personnel at Iowa revealed that few faculty members actually took advantage of this new policy.
Ten campuses offer job-sharing, but none of these were CIC institutions. Among these were Grinnel College, Harvard University, Oberlin College, Oregon State University, University of Colorado at Boulder, and Western Michigan University.
Literature Review
Our review of academic publications revealed that in the absence of part-time tenure track policies, faculty choose between family and academia by responding in one of three ways:
- Sacrifice career for family
- In some cases, faculty members find it impossible to fulfill their family obligations as well as to meet the requirements for tenure. Many either fail to receive tenure, or give up on academia altogether(1).
- Decrease family involvement to work on career
- Penn State University's Mapping Project investigated ways that faculty balance work and family commitments. They identified 'bias avoidance' behaviors to occur when individuals deny themselves the opportunity to take on family commitments, attempt to minimize the impact of existing family commitments on work performance, or try to hide the performance of family tasks from co-workers or employers, all for the purpose of being perceived as committed and thereby securing career advancement. Preliminary results from the National Survey of Faculty stated, "bias avoidance behaviors are more common among female as opposed to male faculty. The women who responded were raising fewer children and reported lower levels of organizational and supervisor support for dual commitments to work and family."
- Locate jobs that are more accommodating to their needs(2).
- This could be part-time tenure track, if available, adjunct appointments or leaving academia altogether and finding a job in industry.
As universities across the nation are struggling to address these issues, three kinds of policy changes have been identified.
- Redefining tenure
- At Western Michigan University, the definition of "tenure" has been adjusted(3).
- Job-Sharing
- Job-sharing is more commonly implemented in staff rather than in faculty positions since the nature of tenure would not suit the sharing of tenure review.
- Part-time tenure track
- Part-time tenure track would require reduced loads of teaching, service and research, and extend the tenure clock proportionately(4).
RECOMMENDATIONS
In light of these findings, and following Provost Herman's suggestion, CCSW recommends that the University target specific academic units to serve as prototypes for the rest of the campus by beginning to offer part-time tenure track faculty appointments in the 2003-04 academic year. The College of Engineering is one such targeted unit; there should others as well. The objective would be to provide incoming and current faculty with the option of extending the probationary period in exchange for a decrease in workload. This would provide an alternative to the present "all-or-nothing" tenure-track appointment system currently in place, and would ultimately help the university recruit and retain more women faculty.
No doubt obstacles exist with part-time tenure track appointments, and there is a possibility of exploitation without the proper oversight(5). As a result, we recommend that a committee be appointed to oversee the careers of faculty who assume part-time tenure track positions to ensure that they are treated fairly throughout their tenure track period. However, the fundamental issue is choice. A premier scholar who would like to devote more time to raising a family will seek an institution where her choice is respected and supported; it is at such an institution that her talents and contributions to research, service and teaching will benefit students, peer faculty and the university community. In considering the future of part-time tenure track appointments, UIUC must recognize that recruiting and retaining more women faculty will ultimately enhance the University's commitment to excellence.
NOTE:
This report was prepared by Kathryn Anthony, Lynda Cabrales, Jennifer Chung, and Lakeisha Johnson.
(1) Etzkowitz, Kemelgor, Neuschatz, and Uzzi. "Barriers to Women in Academic Science and Engineering." In Who Will Do Science? Educating the Next Generation, Willie Pearson Jr. and Irwin Fechter (Eds.) Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1994.
(2) Penn State University. "The Mapping Project: Preliminary Results from the National Survey on Faculty."
May 17, 2002.
(3) Figg, Piper, "Widening the Tenure Track." Chronicle of Higher Education 49:17 (2003), p. A8.
(4) Drago, Robert and Joan Williams. "A Half-Time Tenure Track Proposal." Change 32:6 (Nov/Dec 2000),
pp. 46-52.
(5) Alston, Kal,"Obstacles to the Part-time Tenure Track Option." 2003.
V. Campus Restroom Condition Survey
Campus Restroom Condition Survey
VI. Agenda and Minutes of All Meetings
September 24, 2002
October 29, 2002
November 19, 2002
January 28, 2003
February 25, 2003
April 1, 2003
April 29, 2003