Quantify flexible policies' value: 'it's cheaper to keep her'.

Tight budgets, scarce funding, even layoffs have schools scrutinizing their balance sheets to account for every penny spent. Even flexible work/life policies are being scrutinized, since some faculty and administrators believe that these so-called "feel good" initiatives cost more than they save.

But Iowa State University has set out to prove that flexible policies actually save money through improved faculty retention, which is especially important to keep women in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields, where their expertise is needed.

To quantify the cost/benefit of these policies, the school received a $25,000 Alfred P. Sloan Foundation "Innovation Award" in 2006 to finance developing a flexible career database and tracking system to assign dollar values to flexible career policies. Iowa State also used the grant to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of these policies.

As part of a panel on the measurement and assessment of policies and flexibility at The New Norm of Faculty Flexibility: Transforming the Culture in Science and Engineering conference, Dr. Susan Carlson and Dr. Sandra Gahn discussed developing their database and their results. Carlson is the associate provost for faculty advancement and diversity at Iowa State and Gahn is the associate director in the office of institutional research. The conference was held in October at Iowa State in Ames.

New policies on flexibility

When Iowa State updated its promotion and tenure policy, it added a suite of flexible policies including extension of the tenure clock, part-time appointments for tenured and tenure-eligible faculty and non-tenure-eligible faculty positions. It recently proposed a modified duties policy. The policies are available to all faculty, not just those in the STEM fields.

In 2005 ISU conducted the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE) survey, a national survey of job satisfaction among early career faculty. The few survey questions revealed faculty support for flexibility but a desire for them to be "more effective."