CU offers a program to reimburse some adoption expenses

From left, Veasna Howe Pedersen, Rod Howe, Sethik Pedersen Howe and Mark Pedersen in their home earlier this month. Under the new Cornell Adoption Assistance Program for faculty and staff, families like Howe's can now receive up to $5,000 in reimbursement for expenses associated with adopting a child. Howe, associate director for CaRDI at Cornell, and Pedersen are parents of Veasna and Sethik, who both were adopted from Cambodia. Frank DiMeo/University Photography

By Susan S. Lang

In 1999 Cornell employee Rod Howe flew to Cambodia to pick up his newly adopted son Sethik, who was 2 years old at the time. When all was said and done, the related international adoption expenses totaled around $17,000.

If that adoption were to take place this year, he could take advantage of a new Adoption Assistance Program at Cornell that offers faculty and staff up to $5,000 reimbursement for expenses associated with adopting a child.

"I am pleased that the university can provide this important benefit," said Cornell Provost Biddy Martin, who with President Jeffrey Lehman announced the new Adoption Assistance Program this week. "It is part of Cornell's ongoing commitment to help staff and faculty balance the diverse responsibilities of their working and personal lives."

The adoption assistance benefit has been in the works for more than a decade, said Diane Hillman, director of library services and operations with the National Science Digital Library at Cornell and mother of three adopted daughters who are now grown. She formed the original committee more than ten years ago to research and draft the benefit. After about nine months, the university's Task Force for Working Families (subsequently, the Work and Family Advisory Council) submitted its report. The issue, Hillman said, stayed on a "middle burner" for months as the top administration changed but, fortunately, it never went cold.

Three years ago, the Office of Workforce Diversity, Equity and Life Quality (Office of Human Resources), in conjunction with the Work and Family Advisory Council, began developing a proposal for Cornell's adoption assistance program, based on information from the original committee's report, and programs implemented at other educational institutions, such as Stanford University. Following the lead of several businesses and universities that offered such a benefit, Cornell, as of Jan. 1, joined a growing number of institutions offering adoption assistance reimbursements. "This is a welcome advance for prospective adoptive parents at Cornell," said Hillman.

Howe, associate director of the Community and Rural Development Institute (CaRDI) and assistant director for Cornell Cooperative Extension, says it's gratifying that Cornell now has an adoption assistance program. "For couples and individuals embarking on the adoption process, which has major costs associated with it, this is a valuable benefit to aid in building and enhancing families," he said. Although the program wasn't in place when he and his partner adopted, he was able to take advantage of other Cornell policies that benefit families, including families of diverse structures.

"For instance, my partner, Mark Pedersen, was paying for his own health insurance while he was in the construction business, and it was very expensive," said Howe. Howe and Pedersen also parent Veasna, who was adopted in 1991 at the age of 5 from Cambodia. "As my partner, Mark now gets health insurance through Cornell; actually the four of us are covered under a family plan," said Howe. He also took advantage of a Flexibility in the Workplace policy that allowed him to work at home part of the time when Sethik first came home to Ithaca.

The Adoption Assistance Program is one of several initiatives aimed at addressing the needs of faculty and staff.

"Cornell has a long-standing commitment to supporting its faculty and staff as they balance the many, often competing, demands of their work and personal lives," said Mary Opperman, vice president for human resources. "One of these issues, the cost of quality child care, was identified by the university's Task Force for Working Families in 1990. Since that time, Cornell, through the Office of Human Resources, has developed programs to address the needs of its faculty and academic and administrative staff, such as the flex policy, summer day camp, the catastrophic leave policy and many others. The Child-Care Grant Subsidy Program is one of these many programs."

The child-care grant subsidy program, first offered in 2001 for faculty and staff, was expanded in 2003 to include employees of the Arecibo Observatory and was expanded again in 2004 to include post docs. It reimburses eligible employees up to $5,000 a year tax-free for expenses incurred for child care on work days, school holidays, before or after school and even for summer day camps and programs.

"In 2004, the university expanded and modified the program, thanks to support provided by the Provost's office, to also include graduate, professional, postdoctoral and undergraduate students," said Opperman, "and so far, 79 students have taken advantage of the program."

Effective in 2004, the university also expanded the academic leave policy to allow faculty members two semesters, rather than just one, of relief from teaching, and has broadened the definition of caregiver from a parent with "primary" caregiving responsibility to a parent who may be a "coequal" caregiver with "significant" caregiving responsibility. Other programs that benefit families include long-term care insurance coverage for employees and specific members of their family; different options for diverse family structures in choosing endowed health care coverage; an affordable (based on a sliding income scale), accessible and educational summer day camp program that operates for the entire summer for the children of faculty, staff and students, and various benefits for same-sex partnerships that have traditionally only been offered to married couples. The university leadership is currently considering enhancements to the staff parental leave program, which they hope to implement this summer.

"We are committed to being a top-quality employer that is able to effectively compete for and retain the very best faculty and staff. The Adoption Assistance Program is the newest addition to the university's work/life programs and reflects an additional way to continue our commitment," said Lynette Chappell-Williams, director of Workforce Diversity, Equity and Life Quality at Cornell.

Anyone interested in applying for reimbursement under the Adoption Assistance Program should contact Maria Wolff at the Office of Workforce Diversity, Equity and Life Quality, 254-7232, or e-mail mw284@cornell.edu. Full details of the program can be found at http://www.ohr.cornell.edu.