Take our Kids to Work Day returns

 

After a two year hiatus, Take our Kids to Work Day returned to ESF on April 28. Kids 8-11 years old with an adult that works or studies at ESF explored ESF fostered-careers through their own class day:

• ESF Sustainability: Which uses the least energy? A laptop, fan, or LED desk lamp? ESF’s new Energy Manager (and alum) Michael Amadori measured the electricity required to use all these household items.  Kids also played Wasketball, sorting common household waste into trash and recycling and used (with supervision!) solar power as a campfire starter.  They also had a sneek peak at our in-house power station.
• Color changing chemistry! Chemistry’s Kate Bailie (and graduate student assistants) helped students with simple acid-base reactions; use salt water, aluminum foil, and a complete circuit to create a temporary “ink”, and assembled teeny temperature sensitive LCDs
• All about Maple.  Which maples for syrup? (Any, but sugar has the best yield) What do the buds look like? The inside of a tree? With alumna Jill Rahn of ESF Forest Properties. 
• Something's Fishy: tracing mercury.  Details are important in science! What can we measure? Kids received instructions, and then helped Environmental Biology faculty member, Environmental Toxicologist Dr. Roxanne Razavi and grad students Abby Webster and Mike Ackland with record keeping, measured length and weight of whole yellow perch and (with careful supervision) retrieved otoliths (tiny ear bones that can be used to age the fish, much like rings in a tree), eye lenses, and a piece of dorsal fin.  These fish are part of an ongoing study, Project Breathless.  The samples, along with many others, will be assessed by grad students and faculty to help trace mercury through the sample population’s habitat.  Kids and volunteers thought yellow wasn’t an apt description, and that they should be called apricot perch.  A few Kids thought this the grossest of the activities, but others really enjoyed being part of active research!
• In the Lego® Bridge Challenge, Kids were tasked with planning (on paper) and then building (with Lego®) wide enough for Thomas the Tank Engine™ (or friend) to use, and allow 2 matchbox™ car wide lanes beneath. How much weight can it support? How few bricks can you use? (More bricks=higher materials and labor cost). With ESF Environmental Resources Engineering’s Karen Karker (planning support by Lindi Quackenbush).
• Building an Urban Ecosystem.  What are the components of a park (or community garden)? Kids working on the park explain their choices to ESF grad student and Open Academy staff members Dan Collins and Maura Harling Stefl. Through this, they realized park spaces will be hot. So they added a snack shack, water stations and shade. These introduce a new challenge: how to deal with the trash?
• Chemistry students David Spector and John Pezzulo ended the day with a Super Cool “Cooking” Demo, emphasizing safe handling of liquid nitrogen. While Kids (and volunteers) enjoyed some of the best strawberry and vanilla ice cream (served in low-waste waffle cone bowls) ever, John shared a secret:  that if really like what you are learning, and work hard, colleges might pay them to continue learning about that field through graduate school stipends and tuition waivers, and work in support of teaching and/or research.  

Kids Day is one of the earliest, and most enduring, programs of ESF's Women's Caucus. For a photo journey of the day, visit https://www.facebook.com/ESFKidsDay/; for information about past programs, please visit https://www.esf.edu/womenscaucus/kids.htm.  

Acknowledgments:  A huge Thank you to presentation teams for their time and supplies, and the many others who set up spaces, background checked and provided training to volunteers; Allison Oakes, John Turbeville, Brad Fierke, Linda McGuigan, Kathy Lang and Kelly Berger who got everyone where they needed to be; Diane Jaramillo for hep at registration; Danielle Gerhart, Nichole Doherty and Steve Waldron who helped serve lunch and chaperoned restroom trips; and Doherty for checking kids back to their adults. Thanks are also due to James  Zappola, Gentry Battaglia and Ilsa Dohner of the Trailhead Café for their lunch preparations, and to the Provost’s Office and the Women’s Caucus for covering these expenses and snacks. Gratitude to the Bookstore and Centennial Hall for day end gifts to Kids.

YWCA’s Girls’ Summit held at ESF

72 5th-10th grade participants descended on campus to learn about a few STEM based careers during the YWCA Girls’ Summit on April 2.  Local alumnae, students and staff featured prominently in the hands-on portion of the day:

Dr. Kim Cargill (EFB 2004) with assistance of veterinary technician Carrie Curry (EFB 2014), and veterinary assistants/current ESF students Sarah Hoffman and Savannah Rutt,led participants through  Teddy Bear Surgery and Pet First Aid. 

Current ESF students Katherine Gannon; Julia Frank; Kathryn Resanovich,  Alexandria  Kirkpatrick of the Student Environmental Education Coalition (SEEC) led concurrent workshops on Building Urban Ecosystems

Chemical Engineering Staff E. Kelly Watson-Collins, Sean Hohm (PBE 2017-I think), and George Westby (Chemistry 2001, MS 2006), and students Autumn Elniski (PSE 2015, MS 2017, PhD Candidate), Will Contento, Nicole Byrnes, and Serena Brandt led perennial favorite Paper Making and Testing.

ESF students Shawna Mulvihil and Winnie Ne and staff members Heather Engelman (Dual 92, MS 1995), Maura Harling Stefl, Kelly Berger joined other community general volunteers and Group Guides that offered ice breakers, supervised small groups, and helped in other capacities during the day.  Engelman, Harling Stefl, Berger, Dr. Malika Carter and Dr. Lizette Rivera (representing ESF Women's Caucus, ESF in the High School and the Office of Inclusion, Diversity and Equity) collaborated with YWCA staff and colleagues at Syracuse University and LeMoyne College to plan the program.  

The mission of the program was to empower, motivate, educate, and change the perception of girls and women in STEAM.  The program was open to everyone, regardless of sex, gender or gender identity. 

Is ESF friendly to nursing parents?

ESF Lactation Room: 313 Baker Lab. 258 Marshall Hall, coming Spring 2023!

SU's lactation rooms: see Map

Carer Grant Application. For more information on this trial grant program, click here.

Although lots of ESF kids are nursed, neither ESF nor SUNY have lactation policies in place for employees or students-- it is not addressed in the college's sexual harassment policy, or student, graduate student, or employee handbooks. As such, we did not have an official "lactation" or "mother's" room until July 23, 2013--you may now find it in 313 Baker, with renovations completed over the fall semester. Thanks are due to: Computing and Network Services next door for the more comfortable, easier to clean chair: Physical Plant giving up the room, and for the structural renovations (finishing the walls, replacing the original floor basin with a counter and sink, additional outlet, installing a mirror for checking that all buttons have been refastened); Tim Blehar, HR, for shepherding the upgrades; and the VP for Administration for authorizing the work.

How do we fit into the bigger picture?

New York is among the states that have laws that specifically allow women to breastfeed in any public or private location, and that exempt breastfeeding from public indecency laws.

Employees have had ample legal support. A 2007 NYS law (see PDF) requires employers to provide new mothers with a private space to either express milk or breast feed for three years after child birth. Employers are also required to give mothers the time to either express or breast feed. The company does not have to pay the mother for that time (but they also cannot dock her if she can use scheduled breaks or otherwise makes up the time; see PDF). A 2010 federal law states that the employer must also provide a place, other than a bathroom, that is shielded from view and free from intrusion from co-workers and the public for the employee to express breast milk for the child's first year. If these requirements impose undue hardship, an employer that employs fewer than 50 employees is not subject to these requirement.

Putting this into practice was another matter, however. If you were able to schedule when a child could be brought to you to nurse, you were, and remain, free to use almost any place on campus (there are some labs that no one should be eating in; and that should go double for our babes! This is true for the bathrooms!). For those lucky enough to have private offices (ie, faculty, administrators) pumping could and can still be done in the privacy of your office. The rest of us had to be more creative, and were only successful if we had supportive (vs barely tolerant) colleagues. And effective, July 23, 2013, 313 Baker Lab (near the freight elevator) was designated for nursing moms.

According to Tim Blehar, the door should remain unlocked except when in use, so moms do not have to reserve it to nurse, pump, or clean their pumps. HR assures us that the room is available to student and visiting mothers, too. If repairs are needed, please contact Tim, but for general use questions, feel free to contact Heather Engelman.

Syracuse University has also created a series of Lactation Rooms across campus, which have been mapped by Syr Grad Students with Children. See also https://hr.syr.edu/work-life-benefits-and-resources/raising-a-family/lactation-support for locations and links explaining who to contact for each space, and to access those additional resources.

On a related note, the Gateway Building was designed with a family restroom (i.e. large enough for a family member to accompany any person requiring assistance and with room for the individuals wheelchair or other mobility device, including a stroller) with a changing table in its basement.

We still have a way to go to develop policies that support all parents, including flextime and part-time options, but its good to know that we have support for moms at so many levels of the administration. That said, additional Lactation Rooms across campus would be a lot more accessible for administrative staff--especially in the winter.

Please note that while the nursing room appears on the "Locations of Women’s and Gender Inclusive/All-Gender Bathrooms", mothers should NEVER be referred to a bathroom to pump or nurse.