At 09:44 PM 8/17/2001 +0100, Fisher, Roxanne wrote:
>Dear Women-in-bio folks:
>>Has anyone out there in academia gotten paid maternity leave? I'm talking
>about 6 weeks or so. I had no problem getting approval for maternity leave.
>I'm due 10/10 and have leave through the end of the fall semester, I'll
>start teaching again January 29th. An adjunct will finish my courses for
>me. The human resources people say they're "researching " whether I can get
>paid or not. Staff get paid maternity leave by using their sick and
>vacation time, but I don't get sick and vacation time since my appointment
>is as a 9 month faculty member. One faculty member had a baby last year,
>but she had her daughter 1 week before the semester ended. Chatham is so
>small that apparently no other faculty have had babies during the school
>year or at least haven't for quite a long time. I'd be interested to hear
>how maternity leave is handled for faculty at other colleges and
>universities.
Do you really not get sick leave? My husband is a 9-month employee at a
branch of the University of Wisconsin System and he gets sick leave (which
he almost never uses because colleagues usually cover each other's classes
when sick). I am a 12-month employee with both sick leave and vacation.
When I was pregnant, I used lots of both, especially because I spent much
of my pregnancy in the hospital because of premature labor. My husband also
took 1/4-time paternity leave the semester after each kid was born since
that gave him a reduced teaching load. Warning for soon-to-be first-time
parents: the first few months after a baby is born are usually extremely
physically exhausting for the parents, especially until the baby stops
waking to be fed every two hours or so throughout the night.
Good luck.
Janet Mertz
Professor of Oncology
UW-Madison
