Issues related to career-life balance (CLB)
disproportionally affect women in STEM. These issues
disrupt women’s career pathways, and in many cases, push
them out of academia. In order to halt the exodus of women
from academic careers in STEM, universities must develop
interventions around CLB that recognize and address the
everyday gendered CLB challenges that women graduate
students, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty face. This paper
showcases narratives from the University of Maryland,
Baltimore County’s (UMBC) international CLB initiative
with underrepresented STEM faculty and graduate students
that set the stage for the development of three additional
CLB projects. The results of the former international project
inform the partial implementation of the expansion projects
at UMBC, which include: 1) Accelerating Post-Leave
Associate Professor, Advancement through Intensive
Support at Critical Junctions, 2) a campus-wide CLB
awareness campaign and, 3) campus-wide CLB educational
workshops. Through this outreach-centered paper, anchored
in existing best practices and first person narratives of CLB
struggles at UMBC, we aim to spur conversations and
provide a model for other institutions to weave CLB into the
fabric of university culture as a normalized and cherished
community value.
Keywords—Career-Life Balance, Women, Advancement
|