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
April 22nd, 2007 at 3:15 am
Yay, Berkeley! This is a great step and example (long overdue, of course, but great nonetheless).
I got to interview Mason’s partner in research, Marc Goulden, last year and he said they are really pushing forward after their “Do Babies Matter?” study (which showed women on the tenure track way less likely to have the families they want than tenure-track men) to do more studies and use the research for policy change. These two are really making a difference!