BGSU Welcome

University preparing resource guide to address dual career couple issues

To assist prospective faculty and administrators involved in a dual career couple situation, the University is preparing a comprehensive resource guide which will list local and regional employers, as well as contacts for available child care and educational facilities, cultural and recreational opportunities and aging and/or medical care.

The problems faced by dual career couples, according to Mark Gromko, vice provost for academic affairs, are "widespread nationally, not just here."

Creation of the resource guide, he said, "will be an important tool in the retention of new faculty." Easing the situation for dual career couples "is in the University's interest to pursue," he said, "not just for those individuals involved, but for the interests of the University as a whole."

A year ago, Provost Charles Middleton "recognized the importance of the problem and believed it needed to be addressed in a thoughtful manner," according to Fiona MacKinnon-Slaney, higher education. "He also wanted to make sure all the bases were covered."

A task force was appointed and Peggy Giordano, sociology, was selected as its chair. Among its recommendations was that the provost's office have responsibility for dual career couple issues, and MacKinnon-Slaney was assigned to spearhead the University's initiatives.

"My first task was to do fact finding," she said. "I first looked for those who are already addressing the issue and I found there were many people in this community who already were helping with it." She specifically mentioned Bowling Green-Area Chamber of Commerce Director Joan Gordon, who already had compiled a listing of local and regional employers.

"And the Jerome Library (Linda Dobbs) and Human Resources (Rebecca Ferguson) have been and are putting together information and resources," MacKinnon-Slaney added.

Problems develop for prospective faculty and administrators, she said, whose spouses also are professionals and need employment. "It's a difficult and horrendous problem," she said, which often leads to couples trying to keep their family unit together over long distances when employment is not found for both in the same community.

"Both members of the couple might be professors, or one may be an attorney or a teacher or other type of professional," MacKinnon-Slaney said, and "that's why we wanted our resource notebook to be broad-based" with a comprehensive list of area employers.

Among her fact-finding endeavors, MacKinnon-Slaney contacted other universities and determined that although the problem is common, there was no common way to handle it. "Other universities have done the same thing we're doing-just looking for creative ways to handle it," she said.

"What we are doing is providing the networking," Gromko said. "We can't be in a position to promise jobs to people and we can't do the footwork for them, but we can provide the contacts for them."

A questionnaire is being developed to guage the extent of the problem among faculty and administrators at the University, MacKinnon-Slaney said.

The questionnaire is being created by Kristie Foell, German, Russian and Eastern Asian studies, and Art Samel, environmental programs. Foell is involved with a faculty group whose members have experienced the problem and which organized independently of the University's task force to examine the situation.

The resource notebooks will be available at the provost's office, human resources and the library, and will be on-line for electronic access outside the University community.