Life is not always tidy, and babies are well known for not being considerate of the world around them as they decide when to join us. In most instances our faculty colleagues will be able to predict the approximate arrival date of their babies, but we know that babies often come late, and often come early, and any number of factors can interfere with advanced planning. In all cases a soon-to-be birth mother should notify her chair and the provost as soon as she feels prepared to do so in order to discuss plans for covering for her time away from class. While we understand that families may wish to wait until several months into a pregnancy before making any public announcements, it is clear that warning about the need for a flexible work assignment will help us to minimize problems in the transition. Similarly, birth fathers and adoptive parents will need to make alternative plans well in advance.

We end as we began. The most important resource of Kalamazoo College is its faculty. If we want to have the outstanding faculty that we need to be viewed as one of this nation’s premier small liberal arts colleges, we must demonstrate a degree of flexibility and responsiveness – within a context of institutional responsibility to our students and to financial resources – that faculty feel permits them to grow and develop as teachers, as scholars, and as human beings. At the end of the day, this will not only benefit the individual faculty involved, but it will also benefit Kalamazoo College, the other faculty at the College, and the students of the College.

Approved by the Provost’s Office and the Faculty Executive Committee, Spring, 2002
Update August 2012