How Cal Poly manages The 'two-body problem'
SLO Tribune 1/7/07
More photosWhen physicists Glen and Kat Gillen began searching for teaching jobs in the fall of 2005, they narrowed what they were looking for: an instruction-oriented college with a physics department, a tenure track offer and no graduate program.
They found 25 teaching jobs in the United States that fit their criteria. Of those, only two universities were advertising more than one opening. Cal Poly was one of them.
The story of how the Gillens came to teach at Cal Poly includes a bit of luck and good timing and something else --the university's ability to recognize "the two-body problem" and do something about it.
Academics often marry academics, and if a university wants to attract one faculty member, it better be prepared to consider the spouse for a job, Cal Poly officials said. Doing so gives Cal Poly a competitive edge in recruiting and retaining employees, they said.
"It makes more people find us attractive," said Richard Saenz, head of the physics department. "It gives us a leg up on attracting the candidates we want. It also makes it much easier to overcome one of the big handicaps here, and that is the high cost of living."
Cal Poly is one of the first public agencies in the county to address the problem. Countywide, government and school officials said they will eventually have to come up with imaginative solutions to the two-body or "trailing spouse" issue.
No formal program
At Cal Poly, a task force created in 2004 researched other universities' dual-career employment assistance programs, including those at UC Davis and UC Santa Cruz, and in a 2005 final report recommended forming its own.
But funds were not approved to create the program and hire someone to run it, said Mike Suess, Poly's associate vice president for academic personnel and a task force member.
Although the program doesn't exist, "departments and colleges do make concerted efforts to share information where a dual-career couple could be employed in one or more departments," Suess wrote in an e-mail.
Sometimes the effort doesn't work out. The statistics department made six offers last year and received six rejections, with half the applicants listing lack of job opportunities for their spouses as a reason, said Phil Bailey, dean of the College of Science and Mathematics.
Other departments had more success in filling positions, including physics, which added seven new hires --including two couples --to its faculty list.
"We aren't going to hire someone who isn't qualified, and we're going to give all candidates an equal opportunity," Bailey said. "But we're going to have to understand that if we're going to hire a great faculty, we're going to have to be very open to opportunities for dual careers."
Bailey is half of a Cal Poly couple --his wife, Christina, is head of the university's chemistry department. When Bailey started his career at Cal Poly more than 30 years ago, equal opportunity laws had not been implemented, and his wife wasn't immediately hired.
Today there are three married couples in the physics department and eight couples total in the College of Science and Mathematics. The total number of spouses working at Poly isn't available because the university doesn't track that information.
Couple gets lucky
The Gillens were prepared to work for different universities, if necessary. They were accustomed to a commute --in their previous jobs, they each drove 50 to 75 miles in different directions from their Columbus, Ohio, home --and decided the maximum distance apart they could work was 150 miles.
They applied to all 25 universities with openings and scored several interviews. But getting two jobs in the same place was like "trying to find two needles in a haystack," Glen Gillen said.
They lucked out with Cal Poly's physics department, which had started a job search for faculty members after it had several retirements, saw growth in the student body and had converted some part-time positions to full-time jobs, Saenz said.
The department hired seven tenure-track professors, including the Gillens and Jennifer Klay and Tom Gutierrez, a married couple from the Bay Area.
The "two-body problem" "is a national problem in academics as more women go into the sciences," Gutierrez said. Some universities, including Cal Poly, seem prepared to address the problem, he said, while others "don't know how to deal with it."
Cal Poly "asked me if accepting the job was contingent on Jennifer getting offered tenure track," Gutierrez said. "I said, ‘Absolutely.' They made it clear they wanted to hire both of us but needed to figure out if they had the resources to hire two people. In the end it all worked out."
The Gillens might have taken jobs elsewhere, they said, if other colleges had taken more proactive steps to find each of them a job.
Other local agencies
While the trailing spouse issue isn't disputed, it's also one that some local public agencies haven't yet experienced to any significant degree.
But that could change for employers such as the San Luis Coastal school district, which anticipates about 150 retirements within the next five or so years.
"We're facing kind of a double hit of unaffordable housing and impending retirements," said Rick Robinett, director of personnel services.
A few dozen couples work throughout the district, Robinett estimated, but he couldn't recall a situation in which a person turned down a job because his or her spouse couldn't find work.
The district hasn't discussed solutions to that potential problem, he said.
"I think our biggest issue is going to be recruiting as opposed to retention," he added. "I think we're going to hit a place where we do have a lot of people exiting and while we might be able to get young teachers out of local institutions, I'm not sure we're going to get enough."
Annette Loria, executive director of human resources and labor relations at Cuesta College, tries to help applicants who inquire about available jobs for their spouses.
"We typically will refer them to a Web site for current openings and try to suggest other offerings," such as directing them to Cal Poly or local school districts, she said.
San Luis Obispo County doesn't get many inquiries about jobs for spouses, but that could be because so much information --such as job openings and housing prices --is available online, said Richard Greek, county Human Resources director.
A staff analyst could recall only five or six cases in recent years in which an applicant decided not to continue the interview process, but Greek thought the decision was related to housing costs, rather than job availability. San Luis Obispo County is among the least-affordable markets in the nation for housing.
However, he did recall another trend.
"It does seem usual for one person to land a job here," Greek said, "and the other one to follow several years later."
That's what happened to Kris Vardas and his wife, Tracey, who moved to Pismo Beach to better the health of their young son, Andrew, who suffers from asthma.
Vardas, a newly elected Pismo Beach councilman who works for the San Luis Obispo-based consulting firm Padre Associates, continued telecommuting after his family moved to the Central Coast from Sacramento. His wife was also forced to telecommute after her job offer fell through.
"We were alternating weeks where one of us would be here for a week and we'd switch," Vardas said. "I would lie if I didn't say there were moments of despair. But it turns out I ended up having three job offers that popped up at once."
Tracey Vardas landed a job with the county's Office of Emergency Services, and the couple's son is thriving.
Kris Vardas had several suggestions for solving the "two-body problem," including that statewide and national companies embrace telecommuting and local leaders work to attract more businesses and employers to the region.
A wish granted
The Gillens say they are overjoyed with their jobs in San Luis Obispo.
"If we could have had one wish, it would have been Cal Poly," Kat Gillen said.
The couple has slipped into an easy routine of driving together most mornings from their Los Osos home to Cal Poly and buying a coffee at Julian's before retreating to their separate offices two doors away from each other in the science building.
"Sometimes during the busy days we hardly see each other," Kat Gillen said.
"But if we'd ended up with different professor jobs at different schools," Glen Gillen added, "we'd see each other only on weekends."
On their less busy days, the couple meets for lunch, sometimes walking to Campus Market for sushi or grabbing a couple of slices of pizza at Backstage Pizza.
On Friday nights they try out restaurants in San Luis Obispo or Los Osos. And on weekends, they explore the county, hiking Bishop Peak, walking in Los Osos' Elfin Forest or exploring Pismo Beach's butterfly grove.
For the newlyweds, who married on May 26, working together as first-year Cal Poly professors has brought them closer.
They lunched on pizza one recent Friday while oldies music played on the jukebox at Backstage.
They chatted about work: the classes they will teach in the spring, the pros and cons of giving credit for homework (Kat does, Glen doesn't), and their weekend plans.
"We definitely know what the other person is going through," Glen Gillen said. "If one person is grouchy or tired, you definitely understand."