The Graduate Student Senate has begun drafting a policy that could potentially allow graduate students to take a medical leave of absence.
The proposed Graduate Student Leave Policy would give full-time graduate students a chance to “maintain their full-time, registered status, as well as to facilitate their return to full participation in their coursework, teaching, and research in a seamless manner.”
In addition, the policy would establish that the leave of absence would not affect graduate students’ annual evaluation of assistantship status or the completion of their graduate degree. Graduate students that receive stipend-support would be able to continue to receive funding.
Martin Walker, the anthropology representative of GSS, is the main writer of the policy’s draft. Walker said that the reason for trying to design a leave of absence policy is because without one, graduate students have no solid plan of action when a major medical issue arises.
“As of right now,” Walker explained, “if you are a graduate student with an assistantship (and) you need time off, you’ll have to leave your assistantship, in theory, unless your department’s really lax about it.”
With a solid policy in place, Walker and GSS are hoping that there will be either an across-the-board plan for the grad program or at least a template for each individual department to create their own leave policy.
Walker stressed that GSS has only written the first draft of the leave of absence policy and revisions are expected. He hopes that a final draft will be complete sometime mid-December and be presented to GSS during the January meeting.
“We’re going to change some of the wording around. Parts of it are very specific and parts of it are very general,” Walker said.
As it is now, the proposed leave policy would allow six weeks of leave for the graduate student for the purpose of childbirth or adoption. If both parents are full-time graduate students at UT, only one parent would be able to take the leave of absence.
The “Leave for Family or Dependent Care” portion of the policy would also allow for six weeks of funded leave from the grad program in the event of serious health concerns for a spouse, child, parent or other dependent of the grad student.
If the leave requires more than six weeks, then the grad student would no longer be able to receive financial support from UT. The university would only allow for a total of six months of leave; beyond that, the grad student would need to consult their academic advisor.
There would also be a “Personal Health Leave of Absence” section. Like the dependent care policy, full-time, stipend-supported grad students could receive up to six months of university approved leave, however, only during the first six weeks would the grad student still receive his or her stipend.
Full-time grad students that are not stipend-supported could still request a leave of absence for all of the above reasons through the same process, but without the stipend-benefits.
During Thursday’s meeting, GSS also tabled discussion on developing an equal insurance benefits policy for both heterosexual and homosexual domestic partners.
The idea to develop the benefits policy was spawned after the Faculty Senate sent a proposal to Chancellors Jimmy Cheek and Larry Arrington to discuss possible options of getting benefits for the domestic partners of faculty.
While discussion about GSS making their own policy has been tabled, that does not mean that efforts to make a policy have come to an end. Amanda Sanford, GSS president, said that GSS is just taking its time to make sure that the process is done correctly.
“The reason that we decided not to do it this time is that we could form a committee and figure out what we could do to approach (an equal benefits policy) and do it right, essentially,” Sanford explained. “To have the background research, to have an actual policy crafted that is potentially palatable to the administration and not just discussion among GSS.”
Sanford said that research will be done over winter break and will be brought forward during the January GSS meeting. A full schedule for the spring semester’s GSS meetings is to be announced in the near future.
