Summary

A. Progress in 2002/03

1. Academic Climate Study: The Academic Climate Study was conducted Fall 2002 with funding from the Provost and the results are available on the Agenda for Women web site (www.umd.umich.edu/agenda_for_women). The basic findings are: no evidence of gender differences in faculty experiences in many areas; however women faculty did report more experiences with gender discrimination and sexual harassment.

Recommendations to Senior Administrators:

(1) Conduct a 5-year follow up survey to assess progress.

(2) Publicize thoroughly a policy of zero tolerance of sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and disrespectful behavior.

(3) Provide regular training for managers & employees on treating co-workers fairly and respectfully.

(4) Make policy on sexual harassment more visible and subject to regular review. Strictly enforce the policy

(5) Centralize record keeping on misconduct and apply of discipline appropriate to the offense and number of offenses.

(6) Identify units on campus that have a good academic climate and use them as a model for the campus.

(7) Actively recruit women faculty in areas where women are clearly still a minority.

(8) Develop educational opportunities to teach women their rights and how to protect themselves.

2. Child Care Benefits: AFW proposed to raise the cap on “stopping the clock for birth or adoption” from one to two children and entitle men to modified duties.

3. Staff Climate Issues: Anecdotal evidence suggests more climate issues among staff than faculty, especially regarding respectful treatment. AFW Committee plans to administer a Staff Climate Survey. The Committee also recommends review and revision of the grievance process and that, following the faculty model, employees be given the opportunity to evaluate their supervisors annually.

4. Women’s Resource Center: The new director is in place and the Center is up and running.

5. Staff Tuition Reimbursement: Current policies and usage were reviewed. The AFW committee recommends the University set aside an account for tuition reimbursement; any unused portion could be returned to the campus. Committee also recommends central control and disbursement.

6. Website: The AFW website has been updated.

B. Goals for 2003/04

1. Finish Staff Climate Survey and prepare appropriate recommendations.

2. Family responsibilities policy for child, spouse, elderly care.

3. Encourage outspoken leadership to promote a climate of tolerance, inclusiveness and respect for all.

4. Take action on recommendations from the Academic Climate Survey.

Introduction

During 2002-2003, the Agenda for Women (AFW) actively worked in the areas most concerning women on the UM-D campus and each area was assigned to at least one AFW member to lead the task. This report describes the major work accomplished in the following areas:

UM-Dearborn’s academic climate Study.
Katie Anderson-Levitt, Yi Lu Murphey, James Gruber

Faculty/staff benefits related to leave for child care
Mary Donegan

Staff Climate Study and Survey
Nancy Wrobel, James Gruber, Roma Heaney(chair), Beth Wheland, Mary Wyatt

Nancy Wrobel, Katie Anderson-Levitt, Roma Heaney, Joanne Hurt

Staff tuition reimbursement’s study
Laura Beer and Roma Heaney

AFW website
Yi Lu Murphey

The following sections describe the work accomplished in each of these areas.

UM-Dearborn’s Academic Climate Study

In March, 2002, AFW learned about a workshop on the impact of the MIT Gender Equity Study given by the Ann Arbor campus and also learned that Abby Stewart, then Director of the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at the Ann Arbor campus was conducting an NSF-funded UM-study on the gender equity issue for women in science. The name of the NSF project is called ADVANCE. AFW saw there was a need for academic climate study and therefore formed subcommittee with members Katie Anderson-Levitt, Yi Lu Murphey, James Gruber to take on this task. The subcommittee met with the ADVANCE Project PI Abby Stewart on May 2 to discuss possible involvement of Dearborn campus (and Flint) in this Project. Subsequently the subcommittee met with Provost Simpson to request funding for conducting the Academic Climate Survey on the UM-D campus in early Fall 2002. The Provost was extremely supportive of administering the survey to the entire faculty, librarians and curators and provided $10,000 for this study. The Faculty Senate Council discussed this issue on May 20 and strongly endorsed the idea provided that anonymity must be strictly followed during the survey. Katie attended the Council of Deans meeting on June 5, 2002 and presented the climate study project.

The survey was conducted in Fall 2002 with the assistance from the ADVANCE project research staffs. There were 42 women faculty and 68 men faculty on the UM-D campus responded to the survey. The survey data were collected and analyzed at the beginning of 2003, and the subcommittee received the study report in March, 2003. The report was immediately distributed to Provost Simpson and Chancellor Little. The entire report can be found at the AFW’s website: http://www.umd.umich.edu/agenda_for_women/.

The study was carefully constructed and the report contained a few important findings. In many areas, the study found no gender differences in faculty experience on UM-Dearborn campus. However, there are several exceptions, some disturbing. Notably, the percentage of women faculty reporting gender discrimination is quite high compared to an analogous study of women in science (page 10 in report), and the rate of reported sexual harassment is surprisingly high compared to similar faculty surveys elsewhere (page 10 in report). James Gruber, a subcommittee member, felt that the results showed a chilly climate in UMD campus based on the finding in the sexual discrimination and sexual harassment category.

Kathryn Anderson-Levitt and Yi Lu Murphey attended a meeting with the senior officers of UM-D campus on April 3, 2003, to present the findings from the Academic Climate Study. Chancellor Little attended the AFW committee meeting on April 18, 2003 and he agreed that certain actions should be taken such as senior officer training, a letter from the Chancellor to the entire campus to address the gender and climate issues.

The AFW committee held many discussions on the report and made the following recommendations to improve academic climate:

1. The UM-D campus should devise a long-term procedure to improve academic climate, and conduct a 5-year follow up survey to assess progress.

2. The campus administration should publicize thoroughly a policy of zero tolerance of sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and disrespectful behavior

3. UMD campus should provide regular training for managers and employees on treating subordinates and co-workers with respect. Training should be carried out from senior officers down to the supervisors in departments and various offices within colleges and schools.

4. UMD campus should make policy on sexual harassment more visible and Strictly enforce the policy. The policy and practice should be subject to regular review.

5. Centralize record keeping on misconduct and applications of discipline appropriate to the offense and number of offenses.

6. Senior managers should identify units on the UM-D campus that have a good academic climate for women and use them as a model for the campus.

7. Actively recruit women faculty in the areas where women are clearly still a minority. Extra support such as research equipment and student support should be given to individual women faculty on a competitive basis.

8. Develop educational opportunities to teach women their rights and how to protect themselves

Faculty/staff benefits related to leave for child care
AFW member Mary Donegan has been working on this task over a year. Mary Donegan first focused on the faculty benefits related to child care issue. She interviewed a few faculty members who had experienced child care issues in the last two years. She reported that UMD's policy to permit one year of stopping the tenure clock has been a tremendous improvement over our prior non-policy, and it has served many people well (although there may have been a few who fell through the cracks due to uneven application of the policy.) However, AAUP now recommends that male or female "faculty who are the primary (or co-equal) caretakers of newborn or newly adopted children be permitted to "stop the tenure clock" for up to two years (one year per new child), even if they continue working full time during that period." This goes a step beyond our existing policy because it does not cap the benefit at one child.

Mary drafted a document called the Statement on Recommendations for UM-Dearborn Policy toward Family Responsibilities. The AFW discussed the document at its June 7th meeting, the faculty senate discussed and approved the document on June 10, 2002. The report was submitted to the Provost’s office in June, 2002. AFW members, Mary Doengan, Joanne Hurt and Yi Lu Murphey met with the Provost and the Chancellor on October 31, 2002 to discuss the following three recommendations made by the report.

1. Allow untenured faculty to stop the tenure clock two times during the probationary period due to the birth or adoption of children or to address dependent care responsibilities.

2. Provide a semester long period of modified teaching responsibilities to men and women faculty within the first year following the birth or adoption of a child.

3. The Provost Office should distribute policies by email each year to all full time faculty. In addition, address these policies during new faculty orientation.

The Provost and Chancellor agreed to implement the resolution 3 immediately. The provost reported that at Faculty Senate’s October meeting he suggested to send the University of Michigan’s legal council an email for advice on the legality of the first 2 recommendations. The provost promised that he would forward the reply to AFW after he received it.

The Provost also suggested that if UMD faculty chose to go forward on the first 2 resolutions, then the UMD faculty senate should submit the resolutions to SACUA for discussion and SACUA can carry forward if its members agree.

The Chancellor and the Provost also suggested to dissect the first two resolutions to see if UMD can exercise more discretion over certain related issues.

Mary also worked on the dependant care issues for staff including child care, elder care, sick family members, etc.. She started informal interviews with staff members. A few serious issues surfaced during these interviews including HR’s inflexibility in changing work schedule to accommodate dependant care needs. Mary devised a staff survey and received about 78 survey responses from staff members. AFW was pleased to see the good response rate from the staff. Members suggested that the survey results should be shared with faculties.

Staff Climate/Supervisor training
Nancy Wrobel spearheaded in the investigation of the staff climate issue. Nancy looked into the Ann Arbor model and reported that UM-AA’s CARE program has an online tutorial on climate training. However it does not address all the issues identified by the AFW study, the climate issue on UM-D is more than sexual harassment, it is really about RESPECT.

Encouraged by the faculty academic climate study, AFW strongly feel that sexual harassment and discrimination is a more serious problem among the staff and there is a need for staff climate survey. AFW formed a subcommittee with members Jim Gruber, Roma Heaney(chair), Beth Wheland, and Mary Wyatt. The committee is considering to adopt the Ann Arbor version for Dearborn staff climate survey. The staff climate study subcommittee will give a draft of questions including the following:

1. Are you aware of the current grievance procedure?
2. Are you satisfied with the current grievance procedure?
3. Have you had personal experience in filing the grievance or receiving complaints. If you are willing to be contacted for further investigation, please contact xxxx.

AFW has the following concerns

The grievance procedure is not effective. The last grievance received was in 1998. AFW members noticed that after a grievance against a supervisor was filed, the same supervisor could still review the grievance filer. Complains went to HR were not kept in records.

Dual evaluation should be implemented: evaluate employees by supervisors, and evaluate supervisors by employees. It is doing so in faculty, but not in staff.

Women’s Resource Center
AFW members Katie Anderson-Levitt,, Roma, Joanne Hurt and Nancy Wrobel were actively involved in the establishment of the Women’s resource center(WRC). As the result of such effort, the WRC at UM-Dearborn was conceived and the first director Dr. Suzanne Baker began her work in April, 2003. The WRC Director reports to both the vice chancellor for student affairs and the Provost.

Staff benefits related to tuition reimbursement professional development
Laura Beer and Roma Heaney reviewed the current campus policy on the tuition reimbursement. They obtained a table from the Financial Services that shows the staff members received tuition reimbursement in the last couple of years. The information was not conclusive.

Members suggested to set aside an account for tuition reimbursement. If not used, the fund should be returned back to campus. Ideally we want the fund to be central controlled and disbursed. In the current practice, SPG picks up 75% tuition imbursement, the provost picks up the other 25%.

The AFW website
The AFW website has been brought back to function. All links are working and materials are up-to-date. The website currently maintained by the campus ITC. http://www.umd.umich.edu/agenda_for_women/

Going Forward
During 2003-2004, AFW will continue to work in the following areas:

Task 1. Finish Staff Climate Survey and prepare appropriate recommendation We aim to complete the survey by summer 2004.

Task 2. Faculty and staff family responsibilities including care for child, spouse and elderly.
Mary Doengan is currently in contact with Carol Hollingshead from UM-AA to discuss next steps and combine our efforts with the main campus.

Task 3: Encourage outspoken leadership to promote a climate of tolerance, inclusiveness and respect for all. A subcommittee will be formed to work on this issue.

Task 4. Take actions on recommendations from the Academic Climate Survey.
AFW will monitor actions of the campus with respect to AFW’s recommendations to make sure the campus is moving forward in gender and climate issues.