Jenny Saffran and Seth Pollak, Psychology
Seth Pollak did not initially want to go.
It was the late ‘90s, and Pollak, then a graduate student at the University of Rochester, was looking for a full-time faculty position with his soon-to-be spouse, Jenny Saffran. Both hoped to land positions as professors in the field of psychology, but they weren’t sure if they would find a singular institution where they would be able to make it happen.
Pollak joked about it. “I told Jenny that we wouldn't have a problem, because I was completely flexible about geography. I would live anywhere in New York City!”
So, when the University of Wisconsin invited Pollak to Madison to interview for a tenure-track position, he balked.
“Jenny said, ‘No, you are going to go for the job interview. We will argue about it later,’” Pollak recalls.
The nudge proved fortuitous. Pollak instantly fell in love with Madison. A quarter-century later, Pollak and Saffran are faculty anchors in UW–Madison’s Department of Psychology, where they study distinct aspects of childhood development (he studies emotional development, she studies language development). Saffran is also the director of the College of Letters & Science's Honors Program.
They are also an example of a handful of faculty couples who work together in the College of Letters & Science, successfully sharing both their professional and personal lives.
Their situation is not necessarily common. Not every academic couple is able to find professional bliss working at the same institution. Dual-career situations can be incredibly difficult to navigate — many universities do not have multiple tenure-track positions to fill at the same time — and in many cases, one half of the couple is forced to make drastic changes to their professional trajectory to make it work. In other cases, it does not work at all.
But when it comes together, it can result in a situation that is enormously fulfilling, both for the institution and the couple themselves.
Pollak and Saffran met in graduate school when their offices were next to one another. Pollak pegged her as being from Manhattan’s Upper West Side, a mistaken guess Saffran nevertheless took as a compliment. They got married in 1998, one year into their professorial careers at UW.
Both appreciate working for the same department and academic field. While they do not often collaborate on research projects, they do make a point of running abstracts and proposals by each other for feedback.
“Particularly when we were assistant professors and under a lot of stress, having a partner who understood and could kind of empathize with the stress was really helpful,” says Saffran.
Over the years, the couple, who were once dyed-in-the-wool East Coasters, have come to embrace the UW lifestyle. They are committed Badger fans and have established friendships across the campus through their various committee assignments. They stay in touch with their two children, who are now off at college, and spend time planning trips for themselves. They also have developed an unfortunate habit of texting their children the same links to newspaper articles.
“The kids take the text that I sent, and the text that Jenny sent, put them together and write back, ‘You are the same person,’” Pollak says.
Lori and Jason Lopez, Communication Arts
Lori and Jason Lopez had to endure a lot of long-distance relationship time before they tied the knot.
Lori, a professor of communication arts and the director of the Asian American Studies Program, met Jason, an assistant professor of communication arts, when they were undergraduates at Pomona College. Jason, who was two years older, was about to start graduate school while Lori was heading abroad to study in Japan. The two eventually spent three years in different states and countries before finally landing in Madison.
“We said, whoever gets a job, the other person is going to go with them,” recalls Lori. “And whatever happens — maybe the other person will have to give up on academia — but we never wanted to live apart again.”
Lori got a position at UW first, and Jason taught at Madison College before joining her a few years later. Jason’s advanced degree is in analytical philosophy, but he shifted disciplines to stay at UW. He now studies sports gambling and sports media.
As a couple, they have an undeniable connection — Lori calls it a love of “nerding out together.”
“We are extremely compatible and we really like chatting with each other,” she says. “The heart of our relationship is just chit chatting about everything.”
The two work out together every day and share their love of TV shows (“Game of Thrones,” “Six Feet Under,” “The Bachelor”). The two even taught a class together, a course on the ethics of entertainment media that Jason developed. Today, several of the classes they teach in the department overlap.
“We always have students that think it is funny that we are married and are like, ‘Oh, I just had a class with your wife, and she said something about your dog,’” says Jason. “So, they always enjoy when they get to know both of us.”
Kristin Eschenfelder and Alan Rubel, CDIS and the Information School
Alan Rubel refers to it as “The Yahara Rule.”
The deal is simple. The director of the Information School and his spouse, Kristin Eschenfelder, who serves as the academic associate dean for the School of Computer, Data & Information Sciences, are not allowed to discuss work topics from the moment they leave the driveway of their east Madison home until they cross the Yahara River.
It is one of the strategies the couple uses to maintain a healthy work-life balance.
“When we get home in the evening — cooking dinner, crashing out and watching TV — we’re not allowed to talk about work, unless it’s something funny or amusingly gossipy,” says Eschenfelder. “Because otherwise, we would just go nuts.”
Both attended the College of William & Mary in Virginia, but they did not meet until they were invited to a wedding between mutual friends.
“I thought he was funny,” says Eschenfelder. “And then there was a group email chain after the wedding where we were joking around, and he was even more funny. And so that is how I got interested.”
Eschenfelder landed a job at UW first, back in 2000, and Rubel followed her to Madison. He had just finished his first year of law school, which he took on concurrently with his doctoral work in philosophy — a move he made to improve his prospects of getting a job in the same place as Kristin. After a few years clerking for the Wisconsin Supreme Court and a postdoc degree in Bioethics at Johns Hopkins University, UW–Madison offered him a position in the iSchool.
“The iSchool was keen to keep me and have him because they wanted another information policy and ethics person,” Eschenfelder explains.
Before he became an academic, Rubel worked as a National Park Service ranger, a gig that fuels the hiking and wilderness time the couple enjoy together. A few years ago, they both took a sabbatical year together in the Netherlands — another instance where they were able to successfully meld their work and personal interests.
“The ability to not get overly caught up in work things in our relationship — even though the work is very demanding — is very valuable,” says Rubel. “If we didn't have some sense of the scope of what the other person does, it would be harder to turn off the work stress.”
Jelena and Ilias Diakonikolas, Computer Sciences
Mutual respect — and a deeply shared love of computer science research — are two of the things that connect Jelena and Ilias Diakonikolas. He is the Sheldon B. Lubar Professor of Computer Sciences, and she is an assistant professor in the same department.
He calls her the most determined and capable person he has ever met. She appreciates his ability to see the big picture.
The pair met at Princeton University in 2013, at the 60th birthday party of Ilias’ PhD advisor and Jelena's informal mentor. Jelena says their initial meeting produced “obvious sparkles,” but it took a few months before the couple began dating, in part because he was a professor at the time, and she was still a PhD student.
Like many couples, the Diakonikolases battled long-distance issues: initially, Ilias was teaching in Scotland while Jelena was working on a PhD at Columbia University in New York. After finally managing to land in the same state while visiting the Simons Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, a colleague steered them toward applying for a pair of open positions at UW–Madison.
“We were actually concerned initially with what it would be like to be in the same department,” says Jelena. “What if we disagree about things in the faculty meetings? But it has been great. It is very convenient. We are on the same floor. We also are in different areas of computer science but are close enough.”
Recently, the Diakonikolases began collaborating on research together, creating another bond between them. He studies algorithms and machine learning; she studies large-scale optimization. They have been married for eight years and spend most of their non-academic time chasing after their 3-year-old daughter.
“As researchers, both of us are very deeply committed to our work and very ambitious. So, research is a very big part of our lives,” says Ilias.