Balancing kids + academic faculty life

In 2011, I started as a tenure-track faculty member department at a prestigious university having no idea what I was doing. I have always loved writing and always planned to start a blog to document the challenges and triumphs of achieving tenure as a young female in a male-dominated department. And then I had a kid, and then I had another kid, and before I knew it I actually achieved tenure. And then had another kid. In this blog I will write about today, and also recount the best and worse of times as I progressed through my career and continue to figure out how this all works. My background and training is in epidemiology, so I will use my population health lens and attention to data to embrace the topic. Some posts are ALL mama, and some are more academic, but most are a good mix of aca-mama.

COVID-19, Children, and the Reopening of Schools - Part II

July 16, 2020 by Rachel Patzer in Parenting, School, Work

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my own personal decision for why I would feel okay with sending my kids back to school if the schools were able to implement recommended public health measures. Three weeks have now gone by and we have again hit new milestones for COVID-19 in the United States and in my home state of GA. We need bold action to stop the community spread. We are going to have to make really tough choices: do we want to go out to eat at a restaurant and host a small party with a few families? Or, do we want to safely send our kids to school eventually? It’s time to mask up, stay home, and start planning NOW for what a safe reopening of schools could look like when we can get community spread controlled and on a downward trajectory.

COVID-19 and the Reopening of Schools

June 28, 2020 by Rachel Patzer in Parenting, School, Work

Should schools reopen this Fall? For many of us who have been attempting to balance full time work and full-time childcare responsibilities in the middle of this pandemic, this is the million dollar question! As a mother of three kids (ages 4 months, 5 years, and 7 years) attempting to work full-time at home as a doctoral epidemiologist involved in COVID-19 research, with a spouse on the frontlines as an emergency medicine physician, I have been scouring the literature for months looking for data and evidence on this very topic to help inform my own level of risk tolerance for school reopening. I’m going to attempt to answer this critical question in this post.