Alma Sisco-Smith
Gender equity, sexual harassment, conflict resolution and ethics. These are a few of the challenging issues that UCSF has tackled over the years as it tries to make the University a better place for faculty, staff and students.
One woman has remained a constant voice for progress on all these fronts - Alma Sisco-Smith.
In fact, Sisco-Smith has made a career out of striving for a more supportive environment. She has worked tenaciously through the bureaucratic inertia - chairing committees, building consensus and overcoming political divides - to address problems in this 142-year-old institution.
"In the ways that UCSF excels in the areas of sexual harassment, work-life balance, communication, customer service, ethics and integrity, supportive work environment, teamwork and collaboration, all roads lead to the exquisite leadership abilities of Alma Sisco-Smith," says Barbara Gerbert, professor in the UCSF School of Dentistry. "While others at UCSF may contribute to these initiatives for brief periods of time, in large or small doses of effort, Alma has continued to bring to these issues vital energy for more than 15 years. It would be difficult to find others who match the number and scope of her accomplishments over such a long time period."
Just recently, the Landberg Center for Health and Ministry donated $50,000 to UCSF for the Problem Resolution Center (PRC) to help keep the peace on campus. The PRC, the Office of Sexual Harassment Prevention & Resolution and ongoing efforts for a supportive work environment are under the purview of Sisco-Smith, the director of the
UCSF Work~Life Resource Center.
"One of my goals has been to secure seed money to develop an interdisciplinary center for communication and conflict management," says Sisco-Smith. "This gift from the Landberg Center will be used for that vision. I hope it will serve to meet the needs of faculty, staff and students in resolving problems which may arise in the course of their professional employment and educational experience at UCSF."
Sisco-Smith chaired the conflict management steering committee that worked for a year to arrive at a plan to train UCSF faculty and staff to work as internal mediators. At first, some questioned the wisdom of having UCSF employees engaged in mediation, since the potential for gossip and rumors could make matters worse.
"Naturally, there was a lot of concern about confidentiality," Sisco-Smith recalls. "But actually maintaining confidentiality has been a hallmark of this program in that we've been able to establish trust and demonstrate integrity."
When the call for volunteers for the first round of mediation training went out,
Sisco-Smith was impressed with the caliber of folks who answered it. "What struck me at the time - and it's been that way ever since - was the amazing range of talent that we have, not only in our faculty, but also among our staff."
Today, UCSF has some 40 mediators from three rounds of training who have helped their colleagues overcome conflicts. "There is great room on this campus to help ourselves beyond the turf of a specific department or unit," she says.
Lately, Sisco-Smith has turned her attention to responding to the findings of a survey conducted with women management and professional staff that focused on gender and racial equity. There were striking similarities between the issues and concerns in the survey responses and those expressed by women faculty in the
2001 survey to assess the campus climate. Sisco-Smith chaired the committee that issued a report with recommendations in December 2005, which was shared with the Chancellor's Executive Committee in June.
"There will be news coming out about that report," she says. "What I am most passionate about now is conveying the sense of urgency to address these similar emerging issues with a more integrated work-life strategy, and the campus strategic planning process underway appears to be moving in that direction. My feeling is that our institution should put its imprint on these common issues - such as mentoring, achieving diversity and equity - in a more holistic way. There may be different arrival times and resource needs, but the blueprint must be there to assure there is a planned arrival. This is where the strategic planning comes in."
That UCSF has made strides addressing gender equity, responding to sexual harassment cases and resolving conflicts is a tribute to campus officials who have asked Sisco-Smith and scores of men and women whom she has worked beside to help lead the way.
"The Work~Life Resource Center's services have been a great asset to the Center for Gender Equity's work in cultivating and developing the next generation of women leaders at UCSF, and for that we are very appreciative," says Amy Levine, director of the Center for Gender Equity (CGE). "Alma has provided invaluable assistance to CGE over the years, and we have collaborated on numerous programs and projects, particularly when our advocacy work around gender discrimination or inequity requires mediation support."
Preventing Sexual Harassment
Sisco-Smith became a champion of sexual harassment prevention at UCSF in 1992, when she was appointed along with Molly Cooke, clinical professor of medicine, to co-chair an ad hoc committee to review policies and procedures. The timing was good, since Sisco-Smith had just finished doctoral coursework at UC Berkeley in higher education, administration and policy.
"The committee was called into action as a result of feedback from several surveys in schools and one across all schools," Sisco-Smith explains. "At the time, UCSF was operating under the UC Office of the President's [UCOP's] sexual harassment policy. It was amazing how many UC campuses were just using the boilerplate policy."
Although UCSF operated under the single UCOP policy, the way in which the University handled the cases varied across the campus. UCSF also lacked a centralized coordinating center to review and respond to the cases.
Cooke recalls Sisco-Smith's contributions to the ad hoc sexual harassment committee this way: "Over a year and one-half, she worked with the group and behind the scenes to forge consensus and to develop a set of recommendations that transformed UCSF's approach to the problem of sexual harassment from haphazard and often obfuscating episodic reactions to a systematic program to educate the campus, prevent harassment, and deal in a predictable, timely and effective manner with such complaints as still arise.
"This accomplishment required a number of skills, including the ability to listen and truly hear what others are saying, effective communication, creative approaches to impasses, and personal qualities such as patience, attention to detail and the willingness to work incredibly hard. Foremost, however, is the quality without which we would not have been able to work with our group at all - Alma's integrity. She is a rock. Without ever being sanctimonious, she used her honesty and her commitment to doing the right thing to build a commitment to our charge and help the leadership to understand that sexual harassment is a serious problem requiring the University's attention."
No wonder, then, that Sisco-Smith was appointed to assume the position of campus coordinator for the Office of Sexual Harassment Prevention & Resolution, the creation of which was the central recommendation of the ad hoc committee.
The results of raising the profile of sexual harassment were initially alarming: In 1992, two cases of sexual harassment were reported; in 1994, 20 cases were reported to UCOP. "It shined a light on the fact that we didn't tolerate it, we took it seriously and we had a process that would bring no harm to individuals for reporting it," Sisco-Smith says.
UCSF still confronts the issue today. In fiscal year 2005-2006, 20 sexual harassment complaints were recorded; 16 were formal charges - four times the number of those over the previous five years. This may be attributed to the training mandate issues beginning January 2005, according to Sisco-Smith.
Sexual harassment training at first was considered an obligation of supervisors and managers. Later, UCOP announced its intent to hold specific campus departments financially accountable for cases in which the suspects in those departments were found guilty. A pivotal turning point came when senior faculty at a retreat on women and minorities began sharing stories about their daughters' unpleasant experiences at other universities.
Just last year, state lawmakers mandated sexual harassment prevention training for all supervisors and managers. Though such training has been provided on the campus since 1994, the Office of Sexual Harassment Prevention & Resolution's current campus coordinator, Joyce Hammel, met the challenge created by this new mandate. In fiscal year 2005-2006, 68 didactic trainings were conducted for 3,361 individuals, doubling the sessions of the previous year and a half.
Challenging the Status Quo
Sisco-Smith, a mother of three, came to UCSF from Boston in 1974 ready to challenge the status quo. She was hired to serve as a program evaluator in the School of Medicine for a federally funded program that was part of a national initiative to increase the numbers of underrepresented minorities entering the health professions and to increase health services to medically underserved areas. The UCSF Fresno Medical Education Program was born out of this initiative.
As an assistant project director, Sisco-Smith partnered with others throughout the state to apply for and win a statewide grant that allowed her to focus on student outreach efforts for the entire UC system. "This was a fabulous opportunity because I got to know the entire system and worked with administrators and faculty from the campuses," she recalls. "It was a great learning experience. More importantly, I believe it was one of the finest demonstration projects of our history - in spirit, in intent and in successful outcomes."
After leaving UCSF for a few years to work for other institutions of higher learning, Sisco-Smith returned in 1990 to revitalize a program to recruit more minorities into health sciences. From the outset, Sisco-Smith envisioned taking an inclusive, interprofessional approach instead of one focused solely on the medical school.
"I formed a coalition with all the schools, so that we could work more cooperatively in outreach activities," Sisco-Smith says. "The reaction was slow at first. But everyone came around, and we developed a comprehensive recruitment package that strengthened the University's image as a whole."
Taking a holistic approach to solving problems has been a recurring theme for Sisco-Smith. Her early focus on addressing diversity among the student body was measured by a longitudinal study which documented the success of a high school summer outreach program.
"We went back and asked students how the program affected them," she says. "Their stories were absolutely amazing. Some students went to UCSF, Johns Hopkins, Stanford and other prestigious universities. The stories of their journey were just so touching. It showed that it takes concentrated, hard work to get a diverse pool, but it can be done with meaningful outcomes.
"And then the legal challenges came, followed by the demise of those kinds of early and successful efforts," Sisco-Smith recalls. "The successes cannot be denied; they need to be our inspiration to work on the development of talent pools."
Of course, Sisco-Smith's own journey has been marked by success.
"When one looks at the history of work life at UCSF, and indeed the history of the Work~Life Resource Center, it is impossible not to recognize the huge contributions Alma has made to the quality of life on and off campus for UCSF employees, both faculty and staff," says David Bell, communication liaison at the work-life center. "Over the years, I realized that it was Alma's vision to 'connect the dots' - to tie together employee programs and services that would communicate and foster the values of civility, respect, diversity and inclusion."
Related Links:
UCSF Work~Life Resource Center
