Research, Science & environment

Chancellor to join Michelle Obama today to announce new family-friendly policies at NSF

By Robert Sanders

UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau will join First Lady Michelle Obama and others at the White House today (Monday, Sept. 26) to announce new family-friendly initiatives by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Birgeneau will participate in a 40-minute panel discussion about the impact of these new polices with NSF Director Subra Suresh, other academics and students.

The presentation and discussion will be streamed live on the web at WhiteHouse.gov at 1 p.m. PST. More details are available in a White House press release .

Under Birgeneau, UC Berkeley has been a leader in fostering a family-friendly workplace for faculty, students and staff, having established the UC system’s first initiatives to address the work-family issues of faculty and graduate students. Campus researchers Mary Ann Mason, Marc Goulden and Karie Frasch also undertook an extensive examination of the role universities and federal agencies like the NSF play in the loss of promising researchers, largely women and minorities, from the academic pipeline. The recommendations in that report played an influential role in the establishment of the new NSF initiatives.