Parenthood demands time. Being a college professor demands time. It is reasonable to assume that a member of our faculty will not be able to devote the same
amount of time to her or his classes and advising, College service commitments, and professional development activities immediately after bringing a baby into the family as was the case before the arrival of the baby.

Under the law, birth mothers are granted six weeks’ medical leave following a birth. Because of the special demands of the teaching role, depending upon when the six weeks’ leave ends the College may not be able to place a faculty member back in the classroom in any specific ten-week academic term. This is because we cannot “hold open” the teaching slot for up to six weeks for an individual; classes must take place consistently during an academic term. With a ten-week term, if an individual is going to miss more than (more or less) two weeks of the term, it will very likely be necessary for the College to hire a substitute instructor to cover that faculty member’s classes: adjunct faculty cannot usually be hired for part of an academic term*. It would be punitive – and illegal – for us to force our birth mother colleagues to take unpaid leave for the duration of the academic term in which they had medical leave because there were no teaching assignments available for three, or four, or even eight weeks for them to assume.

Kalamazoo College has informally responded to this situation in the recent past by developing and utilizing the principle of a flexible workload for new faculty parents.
Recognizing that our faculty perform a variety of tasks in a variety of roles in addition to the responsibilities of a classroom instructor, the College has asked new birth mothers who have had medical leave to spend the part of the term after they return from medical leave focusing upon other responsibilities of their jobs. The focus of their time has been on departmental responsibilities – they may spend time on SIP supervision, working on a departmental web page, contributing to departmental self-study activities, taking a leading role in long-range departmental planning, or on any of a variety of other tasks that would otherwise have to be handled by departmental colleagues in addition to their respective full teaching loads – thus, their flexible workload assignments help the rest of the department as well as the new mother. Similarly, there is never a shortage of College level work to be done – including committee research, institutional research, participation on search committees, or working with department chairs on special projects – and they might help out with this type of work, as well.

This practice has served us well in the past, and in our current Faculty Development Flexible Workload policy we have expanded it. The principles are the same:

• The College recognizes that faculty development time is crucial for faculty to grow and improve professionally; it is worthwhile for the College to devote resources to this end in order to help its faculty.
• Having a new child in the home will pose an additional challenge for the faculty member in terms of his or her professional growth and development.
• Faculty perform a variety of tasks in addition to being classroom instructors; because a faculty member is not serving as a classroom instructor in a given term does not mean that the individual is not working “full time” for the College.

* Even if it were possible to hire a visiting faculty member for only part of an academic term, a very good argument can be made that it is not a good idea to do so. Continuity through an academic term has value, and switching instructors mid-term – even if they were both willing to do so – would almost unavoidably disrupt the educational experience of the students involved.