Work/Life | History
In 1985, the UW-L Campus Child Center was established. Twelve years later, in response to a request by two faculty members, Chancellor Kuipers appointed a Family-Friendly Ad-Hoc committee of employee representatives to assess employees' perceptions of family-friendly needs, policies and services. The results of the 1997 survey showed clear support for family-friendly policies at UW-L, evidence that the university needed to do more to promote awareness of current policies and services, and an indication of a need to improve the work/life climate. As a result, the committee held a series of brown-bag lunches to educate employees about various UW-L work/life policies, and developed a website focused solely on UW-L work/life policies and services. Since then, efforts to raise awareness have included presentations by work/life committee members at new faculty orientation, department and college meetings, and various student organization meetings.
In the 2001 Strategic Planning Conference, concern was raised over the work/life climate and the specific issues of workload, flexibility, climate/respect, and professional development. In 2001, UW-L's Provost office funded the travel of three faculty members to attend the College University Work/Family Association (CUWFA) annual conference: Balancing Personal and Professional Lives in Higher Education - A Focus on Women Faculty, Tucson, AZ. It was here that the UW-L representatives met other faculty in the UW System, including Louise Root-Robbins of the President's Initiative on the Status of Women in the UW System and began discussion of a System-wide work/life conference. It was decided that in part because of UW-L's pioneering work on work/life, the conference would take place here. A committed group of UW-L representatives of all employee groups worked to expand UW-L's pioneering work on work/life by planning for a system wide conference at UW-L.
Although the conference was changed and moved to Madison because of the state's budget situation, work/life efforts have continued here. In 2002 a group of women in the sciences concerned about infant childcare spearheaded a survey of all employees on their family needs, updating the information from the original survey five years earlier. In 2003, the University of Wisconsin (UW) System was awarded $500,000 to create the UW System Sloan Project for Academic Career Advancement. UW-L was selected as one of five demonstration sites of this project for its pioneering efforts on work/life issues. Funding from Sloan was terminated in 2004-2005 as was the role of the work-life advocate at UW-L. The duties associated with work/life issues were transferred to the Campus Climate Coordinator.
UW-L benefits tremendously from faculty and staff who know the research on work/life issues, particularly in higher education, and/or have much experience addressing these issues in their workplace. Their expertise positions us to make significant progress towards "transforming the academic workplace into one that supports family life [which] requires substantial changes in policy, and more significantly, changes in academic culture." (AAUP: Statement of Principles on Family Responsibilities and Academic Work, 2001).