GRADUATE STUDENTS - Family-friendly starts at home

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By Dan Dechene
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Raising a family is tough; period. Raising a family as a graduate student or post-doctoral fellow is no different and in some circumstances may be harder.
 
When Christine Guptill, a PhD candidate in the Health and Rehabilitation Sciences program, found that the University of Western Ontario’s parental leave policy for graduate students and post-docs was not up to par, it prompted a review of Western’s policies.
 
During this review, it became clear that the Tri-Council granting agencies (CIHR/NSERC/SSHRC) differed in their policies surrounding parental leave for funded graduate students or employees of grant-funded researchers. This in turn restricted the policies at Western.
 
With the promotion of a family-friendly environment for graduate students, changes to existing policies needed to follow.
 
The Society of Graduate Students (SOGS) was approached by Western’s administration to create a policy recommendation paper for the Tri-Council agencies.
 
Armed with existing research, Guptill was asked to draft the paper which would be used to lobby the tri-Councils.
 
“I work in Occupational Therapy because I believe in advocacy,” Guptill says.  
 
With strong motivation and the support of Western’s administration, Guptill drafted “FAMILY FRIENDLY?: Recommending Changes to the Tri-Council Policies on Maternity and Parental Leave for Graduate Students and Post-Doctoral Fellows”.
 
This paper recommended that agencies synchronize policies surrounding parental leave. In addition the paper called for supported leaves for grant-funded students and employees of grant-funded researchers for a period of six months and an increase to the number of weeks taken by parents to 52.
 
Moreover, this paper recommended that the Tri-Council take a stance to defend these policies when individual universities lack or have a more restrictive parental leave policy. All recommended changes were designed to bring parental leave for graduate students funded by the Tri-Council in-line with standards set out by the Employment Insurance Act of 2001.  
 
Since the draft paper’s inception, the landscape has changed here at Western.  
 
Western has increased the leave time per child from 1 term to 12 months, has instituted a small grant for graduate students not receiving Tri-Council child leave benefits and changed the start date requirements for parental leave.  
 
There is hope that changes to the Tri-Council will soon follow. To date, the policy recommendations have received approval from both SOGS and SGPS.
 
Both organizations are working on obtaining support from the Canadian Association of Graduate Studies, while SOGS is working on securing support from the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) at their upcoming annual general meeting in November.
 
All parties are optimistic that with this combined support, Tri-Council agencies will consider revising their current policies surrounding parental leave, but only time will tell.   Those interested in more details or updates should visit the SOGS website.  
 
The writer is vice-president of External Affairs and Communication for the Society of Graduate Students.
 
Dan Dechene of the Society of Graduate Students writes this monthly column about graduate student issues. To propose a topic for a future column, please send your suggestion to Dan at ddechene@uwo.ca. If you wish to comment on this article for publication, send a letter to the editor to newseditor@uwo.ca 
   

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