Faculty members often face challenges in balancing a family and career, but Stanford is taking these challenges into account as the University strives to recruit and retain young faculty.

Though the University aims to improve its numbers of women faculty, women on the road toward tenure — especially those planning for pregnancy — face particular challenges in achieving a balance between home and work.

“The stress of combining family life and academic life is somewhat higher for women than for men,” said Vice Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity Patricia Jones.

“They have to make a lot of choices males do not have to make,” added WorkLife Office Director Teresa Rasco. “How do they balance that? How do they have a family?”

On the most basic level, the University provides the option of a tenure clock extension for new parents, allowing them an extra year to prepare the necessary work. Stanford also provides the option of a quarter of reduced teaching work so that faculty with steep time demands can devote their free energies solely to research.

Another key concern is child care.

“Child care cost is also a big deal,” Jones said. “Like everything else in the area, it’s expensive.”

With such cost in mind, the University introduced in 2007 the Junior Faculty Child Care Assistance Program, which specifically targets faculty on their way toward tenure. The program provides between $5,000 and $20,000 per year to the families of eligible faculty members with a child under five. For additional children under five, $1,000 per child is also provided.

Stanford also features the more general Child Care Subsidy Grant Program, which provides up to $5,000 a year to help offset child care costs.

Many young faculty members are also concerned about the availability of child care. Waiting lists are often long for area child care centers, including those on campus. In keeping with this concern, Stanford is expanding its on-campus child care through the construction of a two-building, $10 million “East Campus Child Care Center.” The first building is set to open in autumn 2008, while the second is set for autumn 2009.

“We hope that by the time the second one is built, the waiting list for faculty will be very short,” Jones said.

Stanford is hoping to improve its efforts to provide back-up and emergency child care for unexpected situations — also in response to faculty feedback.

“We’ve had a program in place,” Jones said. “But it hasn’t been very useful because you still have to make all the phone calls and the arrangements yourself.”

“[Now] the University has contracted with local providers, so if a child is sick, or you hire a nanny and the nanny is sick, they help you make arrangements, and the university covers most of the cost,” she added.

For the time being, the administration believes that the programs currently in place are providing a stable base for addressing the needs of faculty.

“When one looks at the number and quality of programs on campus, you get the clear sense that the goal is to support the faculty here,” said Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs Megan Pierson.

Administrators emphasized that concerns regarding child care have generally played a secondary role in retaining and recruiting new faculty, and in the decisions made by those faculty.

“If you look at the reasons of people who choose not to come, or leave, child care is not one of the top, because you will face those issues anywhere else,” Jones said. “It’s important to helping our faculty to be successful and to manage both family and career, but there are other factors that are the main drivers.”

But Rasco said the importance of child care in faculty decisions cannot be completely downplayed.

“It seems like new professors coming in are coming into my office to ask about child care and those kinds of services more and more,” Rasco said. “I think those types of services have become increasingly important to their decision.”

Administrators acknowledged that programs will only play part of the role in addressing the needs of new faculty, particularly in fighting long-term trends within the academy.

“I think we’ll need to monitor the effect of these programs,” Jones said. “There are other issues that are harder to take care of with a new program, like the understanding of everyone on campus — especially managers and administrators and department chairs — that arrangements need to be made.”