What makes professor pairs happy?

According to a new study, students may want to seek out classes taught by professors who are married to other standing faculty members, as such academic couples supposedly lead less stressful lives.

Researchers at Cornell University surveyed 276 couples, in which at least one spouse worked at a state university in New York. Nearly all the couples who worked at the same university reported less stress in balancing family and academic lives.

The couples also enjoyed greater family success, compared to dual-career couples where one spouse works at a university and the other in a job outside academia.

And according to the study, the number of professors married to others in the academic world is rising. Nationally, 40 percent of male university faculty and 35 percent of females are married to other academics.

And Penn has followed the national trend. According to Kathleen Ryan of the Associate Provost's office, the College of Arts and Sciences has a large number of couples on faculty.

Ryan says the office does not have hard statistics regarding professors, though.

The numerous academic couples at Penn have chosen to deal with their situation in different ways, yet agree that the study's findings can be applied to the real world.

Eric Cheyfitz and Darlene Evans have realized the advantages of working in the same department. Evans says they "have been married for 11 years," as she turns to her husband. "I was waiting to see if you'd remember."

When Cheyfitz was offered a position with the English Department, the couple moved to Philadelphia, and Evans hoped to find work in the area. She is now a part-time lecturer with the same department.

"I came along and found some teaching to do after I got here... I had my own track," Evans says.

She opted to teach at Penn rather than at another university in the area -- she wanted to have the same vacation schedule as her husband.

The couple agrees that the study accurately reflects the benefits academic pairs enjoy.

"It's a common sense study," Cheyfitz says. "Unless the assumption is 'absence makes the heart grow fonder,' it's logical."

The couple agrees that balancing their family life and their work is easier since they work at the same institution.

Cheyfitz has a 14-year-old daughter from a previous marriage -- he and Evans have raised her for the past 11 years.

"Being an academic and raising a family... is the best of all possible worlds," Cheyfitz says. They live six blocks from campus, and usually one or both of them is home at 4 p.m. when their daughter returns from school.

Evans says that working in a different institution, even a corporate setting, "is a viable alternative."

But Evans is much happier at Penn. She says she would not want to have longer days -- "I like to be there when my daughter gets home."

Another perk of working in the same building as her husband, Evans says, is that she can upgrade her working accommodations.

"If I were teaching on my own here, I'd be in an office downstairs," she said.

As a part-time lecturer, Evans' office space is much more cramped than that of her husband. She often finds herself working in her husband's larger office.

Another academic duo, Suvir Kaul and Ania Loomba, is currently on the faculty at the University of Illinois, but will leave in January to join Penn's English Department.

For the first part of their relationship, the two were not even on the same continent -- Loomba was teaching in Delhi, India, and Kaul worked at a university in California.

"We spent many years in transition... we visited back and forth," Kaul explains.

After searching, both landed jobs at the University of Illinois.

"We were lucky that both of us found jobs" there, Kaul says. "Our lives really came together then."

Loomba and Kaul agree with the study, though they do not think it was necessary to document empirical data.

"You surely don't need a study to tell you that a couple that works together is happier," Loomba says.

"I am surprised that the researchers spent so much time and energy to get a common sense answer," Kaul adds.

Working together in Illinois, Loomba and Kaul have experienced the benefits of working in the same field.

"Sharing the workplace means that you can talk about your work and your spouse instinctively understands," Loomba says.

She reasons that if her husband worked in a different department, though, it wouldn't make much difference.

"If one of us were a chemist and the other an historian," she says, "we would be dealing with two distinct sets of people."

And working in the same department, Loomba says, "means we can gossip together."

"I think on the whole both of us benefit enormously because of the overlap not only in our lives but in our work," Kaul says.

"We are not just sharing ideas and work, but also sharing a home," he adds. "We always read everything the other writes."

"It doesn't mean we're always friends at the end of it, though," Kaul jokes.

Loomba mentions that a couple which works at the same university should have some concerns.

"You have to try and not let your personal emotions affect our personal judgments," she says, adding, "You have to learn how to have independent relations and not function as a couple."

Other professors have similar philosophies.

David Stern and Kathryn Hellerstein, Jewish Studies Department faculty members, have a policy of maintaining a private life.

The couple declined to be interviewed, but Stern wrote, "The main way we stay happily married is by keeping our personal and professional lives separate."

Kaul says that Penn offered positions to both him and his wife.

"It was clear to us and Penn that they had to offer both of us a job, otherwise we would have stayed in Illinois," he says.

Cheyfitz says that the English Department has lost faculty members in the past because they would not hire spouses.

"We lost a senior faculty member because we could not find a place for his wife," he says. "Another university on the west coast accommodated them."

But for the most part, Cheyfitz says, the University is eager to make their faculty comfortable.

"The University is always on the lookout for talent, and if getting that talent means making other accommodations [the department] will make them," Cheyfitz adds.

The study's effects most likely will not be far-reaching, but will certainly alert students and administrators to a key to keeping professors happy -- introducing them to other Penn professors.

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