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Sep

25

Did any Ohio universities apply for this $250K award? If not, why not? If so, why didn’t they win it?


From the Christian Science Monitor:

Five universities are being recognized Monday for infusing more flexibility into the academic career path. Duke University, Lehigh University, the University of California (Berkeley and Davis campuses), the University of Florida, and the University of Washington have each won a $250,000 “accelerator grant” to build on their policies regarding everything from child care and part-time work to phased retirement.

The awards aim to promote the idea that universities, like businesses, need to revise an outdated model of work that assumed scholars would have a spouse to take care of the home front. While such issues are particularly critical for women’s careers, flexibility advocates say, both men and women are increasingly wanting a better work-life balance.

“To achieve the kind of excellence that our universities are seeking on a global stage, they clearly need to attract and retain the best and brightest faculty they can…. I’m delighted to announce that there’s a clear national trend within higher education for career flexibility,” says Kathleen Christensen, a program director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in New York, the award sponsor.

Several of the winning universities plan to add policies to offer job-transition assistance to the spouses of new faculty members, in recognition of the high proportion of dual-career couples. Others will boost the number of subsidized child-care slots for faculty and strengthen parental leave policies. Adding advisers who can counsel faculty about transitions at various life stages is another priority.

The winners and many of the other applicants also share the goal of communicating better throughout their campuses how flexibility policies benefit the whole institution.

Info about the applications:

About 20 percent of the 259 eligible research universities in the United States applied for the Sloan awards. Surveys and an extensive review of policies enabled applicants to see how they stack up against peers on a wide range of flexibility factors. That process for selecting winners was conducted by the American Council on Education, an association of colleges and universities, and the nonprofit Families and Work Institute.

I confess that I don’t know if OSU or any other Ohio state university is considered a research university according to the award’s application info, but I assume Case is.

This state must move into the 21st century on these issues, regardless of who is the employer – government, private companies, nonprofits or academic institutions. Making sure that people want to go into any field of work, any, shouldn’t depend upon conceptions of what the rest of us think people in any particular field should have to put up with because we live in a capitalist society.

You value your kids? Then pay up when it comes to child care. You value education? Then stop whining about teachers making a decent salary. You want to be treated nicely by customer service people? Then don’t complain about service fees you have to pay in order to get what you want through your preferred method of getting it. All within reason, of course. But, unlike people who believe in gambing, in the real world? You almost never get something for nothing, and think about it – why should you when you’re getting a product or service in return?

Here’s an earlier article on the same topic of making academia more attractive.

How about it, Ohio? Did we even try for these Sloan awards?

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 3:04 pm September 25th, 2006 in Politics 

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