When Boston University biology assistant professor Paul Cook began his tenure track in 2001, he and his wife knew they would have a family one day — but they never planned to have three children in less than four years.
After five years of researching optical brain functions, Cook was notified in September that he had been denied tenure, because a department committee had decided Cook had not published enough material. Citing gender equity issues, specifically the time he had taken to spend time with his children, Cook appealed the decision to Provost David Campbell, who denied Cook’s extension in an October final letter.
“He didn’t find the arguments convincing,” Cook said.
Campbell did not respond to several phone messages.
While many U.S. universities have extended childbirth leave to male faculty, Council Committee on Faculty Policies Chair Bill Skocpol said he does not know whether BU will change its policy.
The university must comply with the Family and Medical Leave Act, a federal law requiring employers to provide eligible employees, both men and women, up to 12 work weeks of unpaid leave during any 12-month period for reasons including the birth of a child and serious health conditions.
The BU faculty handbook, which has been under revision for several years, currently offers a three-month paid maternity leave, but no paternity leave. Skocpol said while the committee is rewriting some language in the handbook, it does not plan to revise the childbirth policy, which allows female faculty to stop the clock on their tenure track.
Many institutions, including Brown University, Stanford University and the University of Southern California, offer gender-neutral benefits beyond the FMLA. Among these benefits, non-tenure faculty members are offered greater freedom in requesting tenure extensions and stopping their tenure clock, meaning time they take off is not counted against them before they are up for tenure review.
BU adopted its tenure policy May 2, 1989, though Skocpol, was unsure when BU’s maternity policy was enacted. He added that while BU offers a stop on the tenure clock, it must be requested early.
BU spokesman Colin Riley said the university offers “very generous employee benefits overall,” including healthcare, disability services, spousal tuition benefits, employee education, holiday and vacation time, retirement benefits, insurance benefits and compensations.
“The university is fully aware of the range of benefits and services to employees,” he said. “They’re created to attract, recruit and retain outstanding faculty and staff.”
Cook, who got “less than two hours a night” of sleep “for months” during the first years of his children’s lives, said with “modern families of our generation, fathers are more engaged in infant care.”
“I didn’t have kids [to] not spend time with them,” the College of Arts and Sciences professor said, “and it’s the best thing I ever did.”
When Cook learned his tenure had been denied, he questioned whether his family priorities affected his review. He said although his research on retinal circuitry did not have a lot of published work during his tenure period, the field was difficult to measure, “time-consuming” and the “training component for students is very long.”
“I never went and complained, and that could have been my downfall,” he said. “If there’s no facility for my superiors, what position do they have to offer me benefits . . . even if they wanted to help me?”
As university employees, Riley said faculty should contact the Office of Human Resources to “fully understand their benefits and how they apply to their situation.”
The Office of Human Resources, however, said it does not deal with faculty tenure issues.
“The only way we can accommodate requests is to know about them,” Riley said. “The employee benefits are very clear . . . and what the requirements and guidelines are, and how to apply.”
Women in Science and Engineering member Kim McCall said the face of faculty parenting is changing. WISE is a BU organization working toward female faculty needs in science and engineering disciplines within CAS and the College of Engineering.
“We’re dealing with a new generation of fathers who are very involved with their children’s life,” the biology professor said.
Charlotte Fisherman, Executive Director of Pick Up the Pace, a San Francisco nonprofit organization working to identify and eliminate barriers to women’s advancement in the workplace, said a university does not want to restrict its faculty talent pool to individuals who do not have family responsibilities.
“You’re losing a lot of talent with that restriction, and of course it tends to disadvantage women faculty at this point . . . since until quite recently, male faculty have been able to ‘have’ children and cede the responsibility of raising them to their spouses,” she said in an email.
Fisherman said given the “myriad” of family structures in the workforce, faculty members have periods when family responsibilities interfere with work at some point in their lives, including issues with children, aging parents, sick spouses and their own health problems.
“So why penalize people who happen to have them in this compressed pre-tenure time period?” she said. “The leave time provided is not that much relative to the course of an entire academic career.”
CAS senior Felix Nautsch, a former student of Cook’s, said there is the potential for conflict between the teaching and research aspects of a professor’s career the university expects, with Cook receiving “the short end of the stick.”
“Progressive environments are always connected to national culture, whereas conservative environments tend to match up easier over international borders,” the biochemistry and molecular biology teaching aid said. “Boston University clearly presents itself as an access, hands-on teaching university. To then at the same time hinge all employments of professors on their research performance, at least in the sciences, is exactly the opposite of what you just said to the parents and the students.”
Cook said it is unrealistic for the university to expect FMLA, which is unpaid leave, to be a practical option for two working parents.
“No one can afford to work without pay,” he said.
Looking toward peer institutions extending their gender-neutral policies within the last five years, Cook said he encourages the university to do the same, using a revised gender-neutral leave policy as “an important recruitment tool” for new faculty.
“BU needs to step up to the plate,” he said, “if they want to play in the big pen.”
University of California-Berkeley Assistant Vice Provost Patti Owen said her institution tries to make it easier for all faculty members to start a family by extending benefits beyond FMLA.
“We’re really trying to put cushions around faculty,” she said. “Different people have different policies . . . I think any cost that comes from these, it actually helps the institutions. First of all, it’s a morale booster. If your faculty aren’t successful, and don’t get tenure, that’s a cost to [the institution].”
Cook, whose BU employment ends in August 2007, said he encourages university officials to make the necessary changes to accommodate the working faculty member “in order to promote this work area as family-friendly.”
“It falls on the shoulders of the faculty to change the bylaws,” he said. “I know the people who care about this are the people with families.”
Cook said he wonders why faculty members have not dealt with the issue before, and said the non-tenured faculty may not feel as if they are in a position to change policy.
“No hierarchy likes subordinates to make waves,” he said.
Calling it “painful to leave,” Cook said BU is “a great place to work.” As of now, he is unsure of where he will continue working.
“I’m disappointed in having to leave BU, teaching a great cohort of students, but I’m very excited about the prospects for my future work in applying my knowledge and expertise,” he said. Cook recently co-authored a paper on visual neuroscience with one of his graduate students. The paper, along with two additional manuscripts, is in review and revision for publication.”
The issue is productivity,” he said in an email. “It’s clear — had I been given another two or three years, these papers would have been published.”