Jennifer Strehler never expected to be pumping her breast milk in a vacant office in the Technological Institute.

When the third-year doctoral student in industrial engineering got pregnant two years ago, she assumed she’d find on-campus child care – or at least daycare openings in Evanston.

Instead, after an unsuccessful two-month search, Strehler found herself in Tech pumping breast milk during lunch hour to bring home to her baby.

“I didn’t realize this would be a huge crisis,” she said. “I guess I just thought that somebody, somewhere would cut me a break. By the end of my pregnancy, it was too late. You don’t think about this kind of thing when you’re one month pregnant.”

Citing months-long waiting lists at Evanston daycare centers, a coalition of faculty and student organizations are petitioning Northwestern administrators to provide child care on campus.

Members of at least six NU organizations, including the General Faculty Committee and the Graduate Student Association, said they plan to present the child care proposal to University President Henry Bienen in June.

Though NU operates a child-care referral service, the university is the only Big Ten school that does not provide on-site daycare.

“When we finally come to our senses and realize that people procreate, we’ll understand that people have to have a way to raise their children while they do their jobs,” said English Prof. Christine Froula, co-chairwoman of NU’s Organization of Women Faculty. “It’s non-negotiable.”

The latest push marks another chapter in a 25-year fight to bring child care to NU’s Evanston campus. Daycare proponents said an on-site center would help retain women faculty and graduate students, ease the pressure on Evanston daycare facilities and help NU compete with Ivy League universities.

But Bienen said on Thursday that on-campus child care is too expensive and that NU has no space for it. Although he said he is “sympathetic” to the difficulties of finding child care in Evanston, he said he could not substantially increase employee benefits.

Despite the success of Campaign Northwestern, NU’s $1.4 billion fund-raising initiative, Bienen said he faces increasing demands for the university’s money.

“Everybody wants benefits, and everybody wants somebody else to pay for them,” he said. “You cannot tell me that, ‘I want to increase the faculty and I want better salaries and I want to increase the buildings and I want more benefits,’ because you’re just telling me something I can’t do.”

A BALANCING ACT

Although shrieking children, swing sets and nap time might seem out of place on NU’s campus, student mothers said on-site child care would help them integrate two very different aspects of their lives.

Julia Mossbridge, who is working toward her Ph.D. in audiology, said she uses three different babysitters for her 18-month-old son while she goes to school.

If NU offered child care on campus, she said, she would take breaks from her lab work to visit her son.

She said she also is asking NU to allow doctoral students to attend school part-time and set up lactation stations where women can pump breast milk.

“Good lord, if women have to choose between their kid and their graduate school career, they’re going to choose their kid,” Mossbridge said. “It’s a no-brainer.”

In her daily life, Jennifer Strehler said she tries to integrate work and family responsibilities – some days more successfully than others.

She said she gets up every morning at at 8 a.m. and has breakfast with her 21-month-old son, Matthew. After “potty training and Cheerios,” Strehler said she drives her son to daycare, takes a quick shower and gets to campus around 10:30 a.m.

When she returns home in the evening, Strehler said, she cannot start her coursework until after Matthew goes to bed at 10 p.m.

“While I certainly didn’t plan to get pregnant my first year of grad school, these things happen,” said Strehler, who received an incomplete grade in one class and took a quarter off from school because she could not keep up with the work. “The university needs to recognize that not everyone is an 18-year-old looking for the best party to go to.”

‘Families are Suffering’

Takada Norfleet, 4, plays on a set of monkey bars Wednesday afternoon at the Child Care Center of Evanston. (Jasper Chen/The Daily Northwestern)

At the Child Care Center of Evanston, 1840 Asbury Ave. on Thursday, children danced and played musical chairs to the tune of “YMCA” as they waited for their parents to pick them up.

A little boy picked up a blue umbrella when his mother arrived. As she bent down to give him a kiss, he twirled the umbrella around, exclaiming, “It’s raining outside!”

Betty Luning, the center’s finance and development director, said that if parents want to place their child in the center’s daycare, they will have to wait until next January. At least.

“We’re fully enrolled – we can’t expand anymore,” she said. “We welcome any new addition to daycare in Evanston. It’s so clearly, badly needed … Across the board, families are suffering.”

At most of Evanston’s daycare centers, parents will have to wait for months to secure spots for their children, said Terry Mann, interim director of the Child Care Network of Evanston, which operates a waiting list for state-subsidized child care.

Mann said it especially is difficult to find spots for infants and toddlers.

“If Northwestern established a child care center, it would have a positive impact,” she said. “There is a need in Evanston for more quality child care. It would take some Northwestern families out of the general market and make space for other people in the community.”

At the Total Child Center, 1630 Hinman Ave., where about 20 percent of customers are NU graduate students, director Susan Ruhl said a new child probably could not start before September.

“It’s unusual that someone would call and they’d start the next day, ” she said. “I’m already filling the full-day classes for fall. If someone were to come into town after that, it’d be hard for them. I know there are kids out there who need placement.”

Psychology Prof. Alice Eagly, who is drafting the NU child care proposal, said foreign faculty members and graduate students have an especially difficult time finding child care.

“This is a very serious problem,” she said. “What if you are a faculty member who has come here in August and expects to get child care? There’s no way. You’d be in trouble. The situation is very bad.”

KEEPING WOMEN ON CAMPUS

Child care proponents said an on-site daycare center would help retain women faculty and graduate students.

Maryanne Harkins, who attended NU for three quarters to pursue a doctoral degree in industrial engineering, dropped out of school in January after becoming pregnant with her second child. She said the Graduate School does not support women’s needs for reduced class schedules and on-campus child care.

“They lost me as a student, even though I was qualified to be in that department,” said Harkins, who received her master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University. “They were completely inflexible. I chose my family over my degree, but I wish I didn’t have to make that choice.”

McCormick Prof. Joseph Schofer, a member of the Faculty Diversity Committee, said on-site child care would help the university add more women to its faculty.

“This is not just a female issue,” he said. “If you want to recruit women to the faculty, you want to make sure that they have daycare as part of their life at Northwestern. Most progressive employers are trying to put these facilities on site.”

Although on-site child care would be expensive for the university, it would reduce staff turnover and prove less costly in the long run, said Renee Redd, director of the Women’s Center.

She said faculty and grad students have been pressuring NU’s administration to put child care on campus for decades, but that
the current campaign began less than six months ago.

“Child care is a big part of the reason we lose female candidates and graduate students,” she said. “They say, ‘What are your resources for child care?’ Obviously, we’re going to have many folks wondering what to do with their 5-year-olds.”

‘I’m Not going to commit’

Although NU likely does not have the money to pay the high start-up costs of on-campus daycare, Bienen said he will look at making employees’ benefit packages more flexible.

“I don’t think we can take on vast new costs for our benefit package,” he said. “At the same time, we want to be responsive, so we’ll continue to look and see if we can’t find some way to improve what’s happening to child care. But I’m not going to commit to doing an on-site facility.”

But Gene Tze Tien, a doctoral student in economics who is pushing for child care for grad students, accused NU administrators of “stonewalling” students’ requests for daycare.

“There are benefits to this thing that are not something you can put in dollars,” Tien said. “The administration is shortsighted. They care about the budget and the bottom line, but they don’t care about the people involved very much. They just give a long litany of reasons why not to look at this reason any further.”

Care across the country

Several Ivy League universities and every other Big Ten school offers on-site child care, a service that employees said increases the quality of life at their universities.

At Ohio State University, which offers child care during classes, program director Becky Wilkins said child care gives students and staff more freedom to participate in university activities.

Ohio State subsidizes the daycare center and adjusts fees according to family income, she said. The program averages about 375 to 400 children each quarter, she said.

Wilkins said Ohio State’s daycare program helps retain women faculty and staff, even when they receive lucrative offers from other universities.

“It provides parents with security in knowing their child will be in a high-quality center,” she said. “Child care builds morale for faculty, staff and students.”

Medill Prof. Donna Leff, chairwoman of NU’s Committee of Women in the Academic Community, said child care is as important to university life as a library.

“If Harvard and Michigan and Stanford and all the rest of the Big Ten can do it, then we can do it as well,” she said. “The obstacles are not insurmountable.”

Indiana University’s child-care program has the lowest fees in the Big Ten and receives a $164,000 university subsidy each year, said Tim Dunnuck, the campus’ coordinator for child care services.

But Dunnuck said professors and students still have to put their names on a long waiting list to enroll their child in campus daycare.

“(NU is) the only one out of the 11 Big Ten schools that doesn’t offer on-site child care,” he said. “For convenience’s sake, certainly it would be better for employees, faculty and staff to have something on campus, but it’s not cheap to provide.”

Economics doctoral student Tien said NU needs to provide campus daycare to better compete with other universities.

“Almost all our peer institutions have child care,” he said. “Northwestern is conspicuously absent. If you don’t have certain amenities for the community, you’re not going to bring in the people you want.”

As for Strehler, she said that she will continue to pay $800 a month for child care near her home in Mount Prospect and try to balance her studies with her family.

“I really have no time at all to myself,” she said. “I need to juggle things the best I can without compromising my family.”