Establishing the Family-Friendly Campus

"I found the book extremely useful... The approach of having individual chapters focused on specific policy reforms is a real strength... I found [the book] helpful and thought-provoking and believe others will as well."

The Review of Higher Education

"Establishing the Family-Friendly Campus provides valuable insights for chairs about how to best help faculty manage work-life balance... Whether the ultimate goal is to creat family-friendly campus environments for early-career faculty as a way to help them get established in their careers, or to help more established faculty find balance between demanding academic workplaces and family needs, this book can help campus leaders think in new and different ways about work-life as a concept and about a policy arena that can help faculty have genuinely more interesting and intgrated lives that include quality work and personal lives–whether they have personal family needs or not. This volume helps facul,ty thrive in their careers–a goal to which all campus leaders should aspire."

The Department Chair

"If "family friendly" was once code for policies accommodating female professors with children, this new book makes the case for a much broader definition. Establishing the Family-Friendly Campus advises institutuions to attend to the entire life-cycle of faculty, staff, and students. It surveys the best practices in work-life balance programs, covering the spectrum from maternity leave to flexible work arrangements to elder care. The changing demographics of the workforce have made such policies important recruitment and retention tools; but more importantly, they have put pressure on institutions of higher education to acknowledge the intersecting and interdependent nature of "the entire work-life system". This book is an essential read for administrators, department chairs, and any faculty concerned with the relation between work and family life."

Michelle Voss Roberts, Rhodes College

Teaching Theology and Religion

"This collection documents the best practices currently being implemented to create more family-friendly campus environments, primarily at the graduate level, and provides implementation suggestions for interested administrators, faculty, and students. The ten chapters describe work-life balance initiatives at the University of Washington, deans' perspectives on the existence of flexibility policies and women's benefits, and a student effort to establish a pregnancy accommodation program."

Book News Inc.

"With this volume on family-friendly policy and practice, editors Lester and Sallee have created a much-needed kit for retooling work–life balance in academe... The book is a rich resource and contains a multitude of suggestions for faculty, staff, and students working across a spectrum of institutuional types, from research universities to liberal arts colleges. But it also highlights the limitations of policy changes without corresponding shifts in cluture, and underscores the importance of institutional leadership and accountability with cultural realignment is at stake."

On Campus With Women

"To achieve and maintain the excellence they desire, American universities and colleges increasingly recognize that they must recruit and retain the best faculty, staff and students. One significant way of doing this is by providing innovative work-family policies and practices. This groundbreaking book by Jaime Lester and Margaret Sallee documents the advances made by leading colleges and universities to become genuinely family-friendly campuses and in so doing position themselves on the path to excellence."

Kathleen Christensen, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

“The recruitment and retention of a diverse and talented faculty calls for new and creative ways to think about faculty development. This book is the ultimate compendium of resources, ideas, and best practices related to creating family friendly campuses. Every faculty member and administrator that works with faculty and graduate students should have this book on their shelf. What a great resource. Margaret Sallee and Jaime Lester have left no stone unturned when it comes to research, policy, and practice related to creating family friendly policy and campuses.”

Kelly Ward, Associate Professor, Washington State University

“If you need a blueprint for creating a flexible, family-responsive college or university, this is it. Actually, it provides many blueprints, because there is no single road to successful organizational change, and what you might need on your own campus is almost certainly somewhere in this book. Great stuff!”

Robert Drago, Professor of Labor Studies and Women's Studies, Penn State University, co-founder and chair of the Take Care Net, and past president of the College & University Work-Family Association