A new year always comes with new beginnings, and for RU specifically, we will face a major new beginning in March, when the steering wheel is handed over from Paul Nurse to Marc Tessier-Lavigne. As for everyone else, our goal is to continue our work with the new president as successfully as possible and involve him in the issues that are most important to postdocs and Research Associates (RAs). The main issues that we have been dealing with during the past few months and that we continue working on concern the Child and Family Center (CFC) waiting lists, travel awards, and new initiatives.

Last year we performed a survey with the goal of understanding the major problems regarding the CFC at RU. Check out our website for the survey results http://ds9.rockefeller.edu/pda/. The survey was sent out to the entire Rockefeller community, faculty and administration included. 137 answered the questionnaire with informative feedback. Overall, people were enthusiastic about the programs that CFC offers, the care that is taken for the kids and the overall organization. However, a big problem is the long waiting lists for applicants. When the survey was taken, 53% of the people who have kids were enrolled in the CFC, while 34.5% were still on the waiting list. If you figure that approximately 60% of parents waited between 6 and 18 months before they got the approval for admission to the CFC, it seems that getting into childcare is a more difficult task than many might have thought. It turns out that the demand for the infant room is the greatest, with 70% of parents applying for this age group; therefore, the waiting list for the little ones is the longest. Waiting one to two years before their child is accepted to the CFC oftentimes puts a tremendous pressure on young couples, most of who are postdocs and new parents. In fact, 54.7% of these individuals state that non-CFC childcare puts a significant financial hardship on the family and 60% agree that the use of non-RU childcare hinders their productivity in the lab. Considering that many of the young parents are already under pressure a from busy lab schedule and the planning of their careers, it seems that having a child during a Ph.D. or postdoc in NYC is an extremely exigent task. Rockefeller recruits people with the impression that childcare is available on site for everyone. However, the question is how long you wait for it. So, what are the solutions? We had several meetings with members of the parent board, as well as with Virginia Huffman from HR, and Karen Booth, the director of the CFC, to discuss ideas and come up with solutions. Everyone is aware of the waiting list problem but short-term solutions seem to be far away. We clearly understood that one of the best solutions—an expansion of the CFC on campus—is not possible at this point. Financial reasons and the availability of physical space are the limiting factors. One challenge is that infant rooms need a more elaborate organization, due to the higher caretaker-to-child ratio, and the more demanding standards for the inventory and equipment of the rooms, according to Karen Booth. Adding more infant rooms is therefore a more complicated task than we imagined, but we believe that more pressure coming from the bottom up and voices from parents can help push for that aim.

Currently, Virginia Huffman is working with Alex Kogan from the Housing Office on shared nanny rooms. The idea is that RU would provide empty apartments or rooms where parents can organize their own childcare, by hiring shared nannies for instance. We will have on open meeting in February to discuss these issues and ideas in detail and we encourage all parents to participate. If you have any comments, ideas or problems, please contact us over e-mail ( ). What are the solutions in the meantime? We strongly encourage parents to organize shared nannies and help one another find affordable childcare in the neighborhood. Also, we encourage parents who are currently experiencing financial shortages to apply for financial hardships fund that RU has instituted to support these kinds of situations. All information regarding these funds is kept confidential and information can be obtained from Virginia Huffman.

Another problem that was voiced in the survey is the transparency of the waiting list. Oftentimes, parents don’t know how long it will take for their child to be accepted, and this adds an additional complication to the planning and organization of childcare. We proposed the introduction of an online waiting list system, where parents can follow their positions on the list, similarly as the Housing Department did in setting up their housing waiting list. This does not give exact values in months, but can give an idea about how long the wait still might be. In addition, Karen will introduce new biannual information meetings at the CFC, which will allow for (expecting) parents to be more aware of, and better plan for, their childcare.

Money is also an issue on another topic, conferences, meetings, workshops. Often enough, postdocs are eager to participate but are not financially supported by their supervisors. To that aim, the PDA funds a Travel Award that sponsors postdocs to attend these kinds of professional events. Priority is given to postdocs and RAs that have been at RU for more than three years and have never gone to a conference. We award these fellowships ($400 to 500 per person) on a biannual basis–in March and October. This fall, we had eleven applicants and we were able to fund four of them with $500 each. The next deadline for applications will be on March 31—watch out for the e-mails if you are interested in getting support.

We are also planning on setting up a monthly PDA lunch, where we sponsor lunch in the Abby for about ten postdocs. This will give you a great opportunity to meet new people and hear what everyone here is doing. If you are hungry, make sure to RSVP quickly once the emails arrive!

Also on our agenda is the meeting we will have with Marc Tessier-Lavigne. This is the time when we can make a big impact, and are confident that he will be receptive to our concerns. Besides the issues described above, we plan to discuss the salaries, which have not been raised since 2006, despite increasing rents and costs of living. We think it is time for a raise, and hope it happens with the new president.