Hope for graduate school childbirth policies.

A MAJORITY OF PROSPECTIVE AND CURRENT FEMALE GRADUATE STUDENTS BELIEVE THAT ACAdemia is incompatible with a fulfi lling family life (1–4). These concerns are exacerbated when institutional support regarding childbirth is unstated, incoherent across disciplines, or informal in nature. A well-defi ned university-wide childbirth accommodation policy aids in the recruitment and retention of the best and brightest graduate students (5, 6), yet many institutions still do not provide minimum guaranteed accommodation for pregnancy and childbirth during graduate school. In many U.S. universities, the traditional accommodation is a formal leave of absence, in which the student effectively withdraws from graduate school and simultaneously loses her source of income and health insurance. Students who take a leave of absence for childbirth are stigmatized (5); they are viewed as abandoning their responsibilities rather than exercising their minimum rights. These students also face insecurity about academic standing and anxiety about their relationships with and obligations to advisers. Ultimately, some of these young scholars leave the fi eld (7, 8). A policy that provides paid leave and an extension of academic requirements (9) reassures students that they are supported and valued and also provides unambiguous guidelines to faculty, advisers, and administrators. Such policies are especially necessary to help maintain a strong presence of women in the science and engineering disciplines. Institutions are often supportive of such policies. The problem lies in initiative. Recently, at the University of California Santa Barbara, we—a group of graduate students—established an institutional voice through a committee sponsored by the Graduate Student Association. We provided quantitative evidence supporting the need for policy change (1–11), solicited letters of support from previously affected students and faculty, and collaborated with administrators. Our initiative resulted in a university-wide policy enhancement in less than a year. We found that the process of policy change catalyzed institutional discussions regarding the value of diversity in the academic pipeline. We hope our success will inspire action in those who see disparities at their own institutions. F. A. LEIBFARTH AND N. VERMAAK Materials Research Laboratory, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA. Materials Department, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA.