At last Thursday’s Faculty Senate meeting, University officials announced a groundbreaking new maternity policy for graduate students, becoming the second school — after MIT — to offer pregnant female graduate students a full spectrum of accommodations.

“The policy is intended to address the fact that a women’s primary child-bearing years are the same years that she’s likely to be in graduate school and establishing her career,” said Associate Dean of Graduate Policy Gail Mahood, as she unveiled the policy Thursday night. “So our main goal was that we maintain women graduate students all the way through the academic pipeline.”

The plan offers a two-quarter academic accommodation period, during which students may postpone course assignments and examinations. Women will remain eligible for full-time registration during their pregnancy. Pregnant students will be granted a one-quarter extension on all departmental requirements and will be excused from any regular TA or RA duties for a six-week period during which they will continue to receive support.

“We’re still expecting the affected students to participate in coursework and research,” said Mahood. “Even if it is in a somewhat lower capacity.”

Nationwide, pregnancy during graduate school has presented a dilemma for many female professionals and academics. According to The Boston Globe, in fields such as biology — which is evenly split between men and women as far as numbers of doctorate recipients — the number of female assistant professors and full professors drops dramatically. This is known as the “leaky pipeline” phenomenon. Many women train professionally in the sciences but never enter the academic profession. Pregnancy is a major factor in this occurrence, a finding corroborated by a 2002 report by the National Council for Research on Women.

Understandably, Stanford’s female graduate students expressed enthusiasm for the policy; however, many said they felt the need to create focus groups for the purpose of addressing policy changes.

“Since Stanford is leading the way with this new policy, I think it would be helpful for the University to have an annual focus group consisting of students who take advantage of the childbirth policy to assess whether any policy reforms are needed,” said second-year law student Jenny Allen, co-chair of the Graduate Student Council. “Such a review process will improve overall quality of life for female graduate students with newborns, whose ability to balance motherhood and lab or school is very inspiring to me.”

Last November, the Chemistry Department initiated its own policy allowing female students a 12-week accommodation period to prepare for and care for a newborn. During this time, students would technically be enrolled full-time. However, as the policy states, “[this time] is intended to serve as an accommodation and not a leave of absence...It is the student’s responsibility to make arrangements with faculty and with Student Services for course completion and for continuation of teaching and/or research activities before and following the twelve-week accommodation period.”

“Hopefully, this action by our University will lead to other institutions following suit,” said Chemistry Department Chair Richard Zare. “It really is important for leading institutions of higher education to lead. I am proud of Stanford for leading the way.”

Though the University has received high praise from peer institutions for the policy, no other school has yet to follow suit.