As I was considering what I could offer to you today that is going to stimulate interest in changing the climate for women employees at the University, I began to daydream about the possibilities. As most women know, in the realm of possibilities we begin the act of creation. The next step from that, if we really want things to change will be intent, and after that, the dreams can become reality, with a lot of hard work and talent. Now, you will want to bear with me on this, because I may have gotten a little carried away. However, if there is any merit to any of what I tell you, it will be up to us here today to make it a reality.

All right then, let me tell you about my dream to change the climate for women at the University of California. I ask that you relax and continue to eat your lunch while I weave a tale of possibilities.

I will start by looking at least 5 years into the future, but some of the things I will mention do not have to take that long to implement. So, it is the year 2006 and my daughter Leslie is in her second year at Cal. Her tuition is free because I am still working here and back a few years ago the Regents determined that it was a wonderful retention tool to give employees of the University free tuition for their children, as long as they had worked here for over 5 years. What a break! This has been a lifesaver for me as a mom/parent. But, as an institution it has cut our retention problems in half for both staff and faculty and increased our ability to recruit. In fact, we have increased our ability to recruit so significantly that the decrease in fees from the tuition has been made up by the fact that our turnover rates are at less than 8%.

Leslie has just moved into the new dorms that were built in place of the old football stadium which was creating such difficulties with the city (what with the stadium lights and the traffic during football season), that we finally tore it down and built a wonderful new one out at the Richmond field station. The new dorms have a wonderful new underground parking garage that is barely visible from the exterior except for the fact that it allows for the most remarkable underground lighting system. It works on a motion system. Your path is lit as you walk at night, so crime, especially rapes and muggings have been reduced to zero around the dorms and Vicky, our police chief, is considering installing the lights on all the paths on campus. I am so comfortable with my daughter living in these dorms that I often go meet her after work at the workout facility that is connected to the dorms and we work out together. It is so convenient with all that parking.

By the way, Leslie has been working part time at the childcare center, which is also connected to the condos, oh I mean dorms that the University just opened. So many of the students work there, especially since they get school credit in their child development classes. This is their lab work you know. And, of course they get paid a decent wage to make sure we are providing good care for the children of our staff, faculty and students. Student wages are cheaper though, so we pass the savings along to the parents. As a matter of fact, when that big donor gave us the money to build the dorms, she added that she would double the donation if we built the child care center, so we are able to afford to give students and lower paid staff a break, so they don't have to pay high fees. It helps that the City of Berkeley was so happy about the removal of the stadium that they expedited all the licenses.

This world-renowned female researcher who is constantly bringing in grant money to create extraordinary learning environments for the children also runs the child development lab. In fact, soon she will open an after hours day care, as well as sick baby care for University moms who have to work late, have a night class to teach or, have to come to work when their kids are sick. The Office of Human Resources has been working with her to hire the nurses and create a comfortable, yet safe environment for the sick children so they are isolated from the rest of the kids, but they still get lots of care. Parents are always welcome, and with all that convenient parking, it isn't a problem, even if you are coming from the Office of the President.

But, I have digressed. I actually wanted to tell you about all the wonderful new programs that have been started for women at the University. Let me first tell you about the training programs created for Information technology staff. Chancellor Berdahl agreed to fund the first IT training academy in the UC System, to train internal candidates as well as outside recruits, to do web development, mainframe programming and software development for Berkeley. It was just getting to be too difficult to recruit staff from these high tech private sector companies and dot coms. So, we designed the system after the one he had in Texas, complete with 18-month contracts for new recruits and job guarantees for internal staff that wanted to take a chance in learning new skills. Well, there were so many staff that took advantage of the opportunity, that we have closed the gap significantly in the wage differences between men and women at UC. You see most of the interest came from women who were previously in __AAII and III jobs, as well as some in Administrative Specialist jobs. They learned quickly and have stayed way past the expected retention periods because they were so grateful for the opportunity to increase their salaries and remain in the retirement system. Many of the new recruits have also been women who were ready to return to work after having children, or who were just ready for a change in profession.

A great side effect of all this is that we have been able to expedite the e-Berkeley initiatives because we have sufficient programmers to get the jobs done quickly. This means that my dream of high tech/high touch has been realized. Now we can provide more counseling in such areas as investment and saving strategies. Did you know that this type of counsel impacts women most because they participate in savings and investment plans in much lower percentages than men? We have also increased training programs for managers and professionals where women used to hold 41% of the positions. In addition, our career councilors have actively marketed their services

to women and have increased the number of women in professional jobs all over the University. Of course, it is possible that the work of the Compensation Advisory Committee so improved our wage packages for all employees that we just made it easier to recruit those women. Or, that women on the campus brought their female friends to work here using our bonus recruitment strategies. Nevertheless, we now have 59% women in MSP positions instead of the 41% we had in 2001, so we must be doing something right.

Well, I guess I will wrap up my dream by telling you about the revolutionary successes UC has had in attracting female faculty to the school of engineering and to the Math department. It seems that Executive Vice-Provost Paul Gray appointed a task force on gender equity that made it their priority to "market" our child development center and our faculty housing. Oh, I have failed to mention faculty housing, haven't I? The concept is to assist faculty members to transition into the area by providing them low rent housing for two years after accepting a position. Anyway, the task force asked the Marketing Department of the Haas School of Business to assist them in developing materials to market these wonderful resources, along with many others, to women faculty and graduate students all over the

country. But, that was just part of the effort. I think it was the mentoring program set up for women post-docs and junior faculty that created the support and bridging that kept those women from giving up. Top faculty mentors taught them the ropes. The task force also re-evaluated the mix between teaching, public service, research and publications required to gain tenure and came up with a workable solution that was more workable for our women faculty. The demands on women are very different than they are for men. However, the new tenure track requirements create a balance for anyone whose strength are different from the norm. This process has put more female faculty in front of the classroom, teaching our undergraduates. So, our younger women students have more female role models to work with and follow. It is a beautiful sight to behold.

Although I have very little expertise in the area of faculty governance and tenure achievement, I wanted to at least get you thinking about the possibilities in this area. My participation in the Task Force for the Advancement of Women and Minorities at the University of Texas helped me to understand that the issues of women faculty are many times considerably different than they are for men. So, even if this particular scenario doesn't make sense to you in the UC context, I think it is important to explore all the possibilities.

These ideas are strictly my own, and are merely presented to you to stimulate your discussion for this afternoon. I would love to stay and talk further if you are interested in talking further about any of these things.