By Caitlyn Meisner | Staff Writer
The BU Women’s Colloquium, an advocacy group founded by six female faculty, will mark its 10-year anniversary after being officially affiliated with Baylor since 2012.
According to its website, the colloquium is a non-funded organization of female faculty on campus who share research, discuss teaching issues related to gender and address Baylor-related policy concerns.
The leadership of the colloquium includes Dr. Natalie Carnes, associate professor in the religion department; Dr. Kristen Pond, associate professor in the English department; Dr. Candi Cann, associate professor of religion in the Baylor Interdisciplinary Core; Dr. Brooke Blevin, former associate professor of curriculum and instruction; and Greta Buerhle, former interior design lecturer.
According to Carnes, back in 2011, she asked about the maternity policy for another new — and secretly pregnant — colleague, realizing then there was no policy at all. Carnes then, along with the other faculty members, initiated the women’s colloquium at the university, making it officially affiliated with Baylor by 2012.
Pond said before the women’s colloquium, the Baylor maternity policy for a faculty member expecting a child was usually decided by each department chair. Carnes corroborated this statement.
“It was very clear that no one really knew anything about a maternity policy,” Pond said. “The four or five of us [founding members] thought, ‘This is kind of a problem. We’re sure there is a policy, [but] why don’t people know about it? Why isn’t this a more transparent policy?'”
Both Carnes and Pond said during their second year as faculty members, the founding members decided to formally create the BU Women’s Colloquium. They both said this was due to a Lariat Editorial Board opinion piece published back in September 2012. The article was written in response to widespread public debates and protests over Facebook’s censoring of nursing mothers.
According to Pond, the women in the colloquium, as new faculty members, were concerned about their eligibility for tenure. She said eligibility runs on a six-year clock based on how much work a person does during that time span to receive tenure. The new policy allows for an automatic pause to occur on a faculty’s tenure clock twice in their career when welcoming a child.
The new maternity policy took approximately two years after the establishment of the colloquium to become official. The policy was issued in March 2015 and was last updated in January 2021.
“The message that [the new policy] sent to me normalized this idea that having and raising a baby — forever really, but obviously the first year — is a lot of work and that it’s inhumane to expect someone to do everything,” Pond said. “It takes the pressure off of women who felt like they would be, in some ways, looked down upon in their department if they had to go ask for this.”
Carnes said the colloquium, since the creation of the maternity policy, was put into place and continued to meet on a regular basis about ongoing issues they saw and experienced at Baylor. She said they’ve taken suggestions from students about supplying feminine products in campus bathrooms.
The group is currently focused on child care options for faculty.
“The ideal would be to have a day care center on campus, as a lot of R1 universities do,” Pond said.
Pond said the colloquium is not opposed to looking for more creative, less expensive options for tangible child care. She said some options could be creating after-school care on campus partly staffed by students or developing relationships with Waco day care centers to reserve slots for Baylor faculty and staff.
Carnes said the hiring of President Linda Livingstone and her support staff has expanded their line of communication to the administration. Tiffany Hogue and Robyn Driskell have both served as Livingstone’s chiefs of staff and were supportive from the beginning, Carnes said.
