Penn State has a guideline that encourages providing maternity/paternity leave for postdocs, and the College has been doing so since this seems like the right thing to do. However, this comes with a wrinkle. Since this is a guideline and not a policy, the money to cover this benefit is not built into the indirect rate and the University does not cover these expenses. As a result, these become the responsibility of the College and the PI of the grant.
If you have a postdoc that takes advantage of maternity or paternity leave, we can try to get the sponsor to provide additional funding to cover the expenses, but they may not do so since it is just a guideline. If additional funding is not made available, the expenses will be covered as follows. Any future RIF returns from the College to the PI for the project funding the postdoc will be suspended until 50% of the maternity/paternity leave is covered. The College will cover the other 50% of the maternity/paternity expenses from the RIF that it retains. We will not retain RIF funds from other projects to help offset these expenses if the project in question does not generate sufficient RIF to fully cover these expenses.
Approved by: Dr. Andrew Sears, Dean, 10/20/2015
Revised: Karen Brewster, changed to IST_AC-17, previously IST_HR-04, 11/16/2020