Hello fellow GDOers!
I am putting together a panel symposium for the Work Family Research Network conference June 19-21, 2014, at the Millennium Broadway Hotel in New York City. The deadline for submission is October 18th, but I would love to see if we could include some GDO folks who are thinking of attending?
One of the goals of the conference is to "break down the researcher-practitioner divide impeding the design, implementation, dissemination and translation of work and family research that beneficially impacts workers and employers." I have been working with an HR practitioner in our university HR office lately in conjunction with the Equity@Work division of the Cornell Worker Institute; she focuses specifically on work-life initiatives. She attempts to create partnerships with faculty members to help her to achieve her goals--including issues like expanding lactation room access, providing child care facilities for students, evaluating the effectiveness of remote telework for certain workgroups/divisions, investigating the work-life policy usage among lower wage university employees, etc.
I would love to have a panel discussion about the ways in which we can bridge the research/practitioner divide within our own universities--serving a community we know and value--and expanding the study and practice of work-family across the roles of student, staff, faculty, administrator, etc.
This practitioner and I would be two of the members of the panel, but we would love to include more researchers/practitioners who have engaged in (or are interested in engaging in) these sorts of unique research/practice partnerships. Our goal is to create new ideas for synergies in the university context, determine ways in which the concepts of work-family differ or vary based on the individuals we study within this context (e.g., how do work-family concerns differ for students vs. staff? faculty vs. working class unionized workers?), and come away with inspirations for future research and the potential for valuable partnerships and collaborations. (Maybe even propose some projects we'll be able to present at the next WFRN or AoM conference!)
If you would like to be a part of this panel, I would love to hear from you (preferably by the end of the weekend). If you could let me know what sort of partnerships with practitioners within your university you have participated in or are considering participating in, and your contact information, that'd be great. I'd love to see if I could get 2-4 more folks to join in.
I will then write up the proposal before October 18th.
Thanks!
Beth A. Livingston
Assistant Professor
Human Resource Studies
ilr School
Cornell University
166 Ives Hall
Ithaca, New York 14853
t. 607.255.4454
bal93@cornell.edu www.ilr.cornell.edu Advancing the World of Work