Inside Higher Ed, More Support for COVID-19–Affected Professors:

Two years into the pandemic, Stanford University is offering junior faculty members another pretenure year or an additional quarter of research leave, plus childcare and research grants. Will other institutions follow suit?

Most institutions stopped junior faculty members’ tenure clocks for a semester or two when COVID-19 first hit the U.S., to account for research delays and increased caregiving demands at home. Far fewer institutions have adopted additional policies aimed at alleviating the continued burden on faculty members since then. That’s despite the personal and professional disruptions posed by new virus variants, the fact that professors with children under 5 still can’t get them vaccinated, ongoing uncertainty about international research travel and more.

Stanford University is among the few institutions to have offered formal support for professors beyond the initial tenure-clock stoppage: last winter, it made pretenure faculty members automatically eligible for a “post-pandemic” quarter devoted to research only (no teaching or service).

One year later, Stanford is offering junior faculty members an additional pretenure research leave quarter or an additional year on the tenure clock (for a total of two extra years). These professors are also eligible for financial help for childcare or other personal expenses, in the form of a taxable salary grant of up to $30,000, and small research grants of up to $10,000 or large research grants of up to $100,000.

“I very much hope that we can alleviate some of the burden and stress for those of you who have been significantly affected by the pandemic, so that you can focus on your research and your inspiring teaching, and at the same time feel supported as valued members of a vibrant Stanford community,” Persis Drell, Stanford’s provost, said in an announcement of these options [Additional Support for Eligible Untenured Faculty]. …

Conversations about Stanford’s new support package have also generated questions about why other institutions haven’t done the same. Sen said it’s clear that Stanford, as a well-off university, has much more money at its disposal than do other institutions. Yet she praised Stanford’s general efforts to survey and otherwise check in with faculty members about their pandemic experiences, and the centralized statement of support that is Drell’s announcement. …

Maya Sen, professor of public policy at Harvard University, highlighted Stanford’s announcement on social media, tweeting, “On how to support academic parents/caregivers, this is an incredible statement from Stanford that offers flexible research support, clock extensions, teaching relief, childcare $, inequities, etc. Kudos to Stanford. Hope other universities follow.”

Sen said in an interview, “This is probably one of the first proposals that I’ve seen from any kind of a research-oriented university that acknowledges that faculty are coming at this from very different kinds of needs.” Sen also said she appreciated Stanford’s approach of “you need to request this, because we want to make sure that people who need it are going to be the ones who get it.” Faculty interventions at this point in the pandemic, she added, are “not going to be a one-size-fits-all kind of thing.”

Sen’s post on Twitter generated much discussion—including questions about whether Stanford will adjust its tenure standards when COVID-19–era assistant professors apply for promotion. In other words, as responsive as Stanford has been thus far, no support will fully make up for the challenges of the last two years, so how will that affect tenure decisions? …

Conversations about Stanford’s new support package have also generated questions about why other institutions haven’t done the same. Sen said it’s clear that Stanford, as a well-off university, has much more money at its disposal than do other institutions. Yet she praised Stanford’s general efforts to survey and otherwise check in with faculty members about their pandemic experiences, and the centralized statement of support that is Drell’s announcement.

Sen also said she imagined there were less expensive ways for institutions to relieve faculty members, such as perhaps lowering enrollment caps on bigger classes by a few dozen students, or allowing midcareer faculty members to apply for post-pandemic sabbaticals; like O’Connell at Stanford, Sen said that many tenured professors have struggled to balance home and work—and especially research—during the past two years.

“Some people are really struggling with that, even though they have job security,” Sen said. “Without time for research, at a research institution, there’s really no prospect for advancement.”