Dear Senator Boxer

Dear Senator Boxer,

I'm a physics PhD student at Stanford University. I do cancer research and my career goals are to stay in academia and continue doing research into how cancer can be better imaged and treated. I will be graduating in about a year and will soon be looking for post-doctoral research positions.

It is highly likely that my next job will be at a university or hospital. I'd like to find research that will benefit from my skill-set and has the potential to help many cancer patients. But what if that group is at a Catholic Hospital or University? As a student, I have never had to worry about whether my health insurance (provided through the university) covered what I needed. Now my future career plans may be limited or changed based on provided health care.

I have an IUD, which means that I will need to get it replaced or removed in a few years. If I had to pay out of pocket, that could easily be $1000. Without the new health care rules that would ensure my employer would cover contraception, how could I know this would be covered? When looking at a position, will I need to call HR and find out whether the health care plan covers contraception? Who can provide assurance that the plans would not change? There are many leading research universities and hospitals with a religious affiliation, so this is a real concern for me. It isn't one that the men in my lab worry about.

Thank you for supporting contraception access. I find the conversation right now horrifying - a bunch of men thinks it limits their religious freedom if I have access to contraception. I wish I could tell them about my latest cancer treatment research and explain to them that it wouldn't be happening if I had children to take care of at home. I am able to make contributions to science - perhaps that they will benefit from - because I have control over my body and whether I have children.

Thank you for being an elected politician I can count on.
-Nicole Ackerman

Faculty Benefits

As part of my fellowship, I am visiting a few local campuses this quarter. So far I have visited Santa Clara University and Foothill College. The goal of these visits is to understand different types of institutions, specifically how it differs to be faculty at different types of institutions. I am greatly enjoying these visits and am seeing that there is a lot to be excited about at all institutions.

There are some big questions we are getting answered at every visit: How is hiring done? What is the tenure process? Sometimes the discussion turns to the mundane topics of employment - wages and benefits. I don't feel particularly concerned about these topics. If I was working as a part time faculty (adjunct) I would have issues of low pay and no benefits. But as long as I am full-time (tenure track), I should be able to live, right? As I recently learned, community college faculty are fairly well paid. What would I possibly need to worry about?