Chancellor’s Initiative for Assistant Professor Infant Care
Chancellor Henry T. Yang is pleased to announce a child care financial assistance program for assistant professors, with an effective date of March 1, 2019. This program is intended to address the current shortfall in infant care spaces in the campus’s Early Childhood Care and Education Services (ECCES) facilities.
Rationale:
Recruiting and retaining faculty is central to the university fulfilling its mission. Ensuring that faculty child care needs are met is central to the university’s ability to recruit and retain faculty. Access to infant care is especially critical, and this is especially so for assistant professors, who face acute career pressures by virtue of the nature of the tenure process.
Eligibility:
- Assistant professors with infant child(ren) – 1 to 24 months of age, starting in the month in which the infant turns 1 month old and ending in the month in which the infant turns 24 months old.
- At the time of application, the infant must have been on the waitlist at ECCES (Orfalea Family Children’s Center and University Children’s Center) for at least one month or until the age of three months, whichever is later, without a placement being offered. (Note: The requirement to waitlist until age 3 months matches the minimum age for ECCES placement. Infants not placed would become eligible for retroactive funding starting at 1 month of age.)
- Term of eligibility expires upon any of the following: advancement to associate professor, separation or unpaid leave from UCSB, or enrollment in ECCES.
- Each infant child must be the faculty member’s legal dependent, and their child care costs must be the faculty member’s responsibility.
- For married faculty members or faculty members with a partner with whom they share a household, the spouse/partner must be either: employed or seeking work, a full-time student, or incapable of self-care.
- Any type of child care is eligible, provided the person providing the care is not: the faculty member’s legal dependent, the faculty member’s spouse, or a parent of the faculty member’s child who is not his/her spouse.
- For assistant professors newly recruited after the start of this program, eligibility is a standard component of their startup package. In the interest of equity, and for retention, current assistant professors are also eligible.
Grant program:
- Funds are supplemental to uniform recruitment allowance, taxable, and not UCRP – eligible.
- The grant will consist of $5,000/year per infant (1 – 24 months of age), and up to two years total per infant ($10,000 maximum grant/infant).
- Funds will be pro-rated for those whose eligibility period is less than one year; specifically, for each infant, a faculty member will receive $416.67 per month for each month in which there is a day of eligibility.
- Faculty members may elect to direct funds to a Dependent Care Flexible Spending Account (DepCare FSA), to the extent allowable within the rules and regulations of that program. Such funds would normally be non-taxable. Expenses outside a DepCare FSA will be reimbursed upon receipt of acceptable documentation.
This grant program will be administered by the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.
The Academic Senate and Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on the Status of Women are thanked for their input into this program.
For further details consult: Brett Collins, Program Manager of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, at brettcollins@ucsb.edu