When Computing and Information Science professor Stephanie Weirich spent almost three weeks this summer in Europe lecturing on computer programming languages, she traveled with quite an entourage.
Weirich attended conferences in England and Estonia with her husband, her mother-in-law and a new addition to her family -- her 10-month-old daughter, Eleanor.
The professor is confronting what many accomplished female professors still call the biggest challenge for ambitious women -- balancing a career and a family.
"Researchers are plenty happy to see the baby," Weirich said. "They don't think it's weird that I'm sitting there, talking about the principles of programming languages and holding a baby."
Making sure professors at Penn have the option to do so is a top priority for Deputy Provost Janice Bellace, who created a task force last spring to revamp the University's pregnancy-leave policies. Bellace said she expects the group to put forth recommendations for the Department of Human Resources -- which deals with staff-leave policies -- to consider by the end of the academic year.
"Some people thought the policies could be improved and [made] more responsive to the needs of new parents," Bellace said. "We all feel obligated, really, to assist qualified women [so they will] be able to stay in academia and have successful careers."
The working group of Penn administrators -- which has met with the Faculty Senate and the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly -- most recently presented its findings earlier this month to the Trustees' Council of Penn Women, a group of alumnae Bellace called "tremendously supportive of faculty women."
While the University currently offers most faculty and staff a variety of leave options when they become parents, Shu Yang, an Engineering professor with a 9-month-old baby, still called the process of finding child care "very stressful."
When Weirich, for example, had her baby last semester, she took six weeks of leave, then worked part-time until coming back at the beginning of the summer. Her return, she said, coincided with finding a nanny to care for her daughter.
She put her name on the waiting list for the Penn Children's Center -- the University-sponsored daycare center -- before her daughter was born, which PCC Director Natalie Subeh said is a normal part of the application process.
With a waiting list of more than 400 children and the capacity for 106, Subeh said, "We've looked at possibilities for expansion. ... We see the need for it."
Weirich said private child care helped her return to work but that the high cost was a burden for her family.
For many Penn faculty and staff who are new parents, finding adequate child care when they return to work is the biggest challenge.
"The more flexibility there is in the workplace, the more woman-friendly the workplace is," University President Amy Gutmann said. "Over my lifetime, I've seen the shift from direct discrimination [against women] being the biggest issue to ... issues of family-friendly workplaces being the biggest issue."
For Gutmann, being both a mother and an academic was "part of my identity."
Now, as president, Gutmann wants to make sure that other women have the same option.
"The majority of women I've met at Penn, and elsewhere, do want to try and do both," Gutmann said. "The greatest accomplishment over the course of my adult lifetime is that women now really have a choice."
