Countless times over the last few decades, Joyce W. Sprague has lost 20 pounds and then gained it back again.
The 57-year-old administrative assistant at Gettysburg College has been on fad diets and tried tennis and jogging. But none of the diets kept the weight off, and none of the exercise routines stuck.
At the beginning of this year, she had soaring cholesterol, an aching knee, and a sedentary lifestyle. But with the help of Gettysburg’s wellness program, she has dropped 20 pounds since mid-April. And this time she thinks she might keep it off. The program has connected her with a dietician who has helped her stop the crash dieting, choose healthy foods, and change her eating habits. Ms. Sprague has also found an exercise routine she likes: Wii Fit, a home video game that combines strength-training exercises, aerobics, and yoga.
“I wouldn’t have done all of this on my own,” says Ms. Sprague, who says she is sleeping better, has more energy, and has dropped two dress sizes. The program is one of several reasons why employees rate the liberal-arts college as a great place to work.
Ms. Sprague is among 400 of Gettysburg’s 725 full-time employees who participate in the college’s wellness program. About half of them stick with it long enough to earn discounts of up to $500 a year on their health-insurance premiums. The wellness program —which includes free on-campus fitness classes like toning and Zumba dancing, free advice from nutritionists, and courses on preventing diabetes, eating well, and learning to relax —is partially sponsored by Gettysburg’s insurer, Highmark Blue Shield.
Linda Miller, an administrative assistant for the English department, is another fan of the program, which has helped her lose 30 pounds this year. She has worked with Eleanor B. Pella, a registered dietician, to come up with healthy recipes, and even gone with her to the grocery store and a local farmer’s market to buy fruits and vegetables that Ms. Miller may not have tried before.
Many other features make Gettysburg a nice place to work, employees here say. They like its new $2-million child-care center and the college’s generous maternity- and paternity-leave benefits. The campus is a comfortable place, where the faculty, staff, and administrators gather for what’s known as the Friday afternoon social hour to eat, drink, and talk.
It is the kind of place where people tend to come to work and stay for a long time.
“It’s very collegial,” says Jack Ryan, acting vice provost, who has worked here for 15 years. He says employees —including the president, Janet Morgan Riggs, a 1977 Gettysburg graduate —are on a first-name basis. “We tend to respect what everybody else does,” says Mr. Ryan, “whether it’s people who take care of the landscape, or clean the buildings, or work in the library.”
That attitude was tested in April when a well-regarded senior at the college was charged with stabbing to death his former girlfriend, a sophomore, in a house the college leases to students. But Ms. Riggs says the murder ended up bringing people at the college together. “You could see people reach out to each other,” she says.
Leigh-Anne B. Redfern, associate director of admissions, drives to work each day with her husband, Paul W. Redfern Jr., director of Web communications and electronic media at Gettysburg, and their two young children. The couple drop their 2-year-old son and 4-month-old daughter at the red-brick child-care center, Gettysburg’s Growing Place, and then walk a few minutes to their offices.
Having everyone in one place means the family can spend more time together during their commute —and get home earlier. When her daughter was born last February, Ms. Redfern took 15 weeks off at full pay, the standard benefit for new mothers at Gettysburg. Mr. Redfern —who keeps an orange-and-blue finger painting by his son on his office door —took nine weeks off, the maximum paid leave for fathers at Gettysburg. “We did it at the same time because we wanted time together to enjoy our new baby,” Ms. Redfern says.
In addition to paid leave, Gettysburg also allows each new parent to take up to 16 weeks of unpaid leave. That allowed Susan F. Russell, chair of the theater-arts department, and her husband, Jim Hale, online content editor for Gettysburg’s Web site, to take care of their son for a year without babysitters. Their 3-year-old, Samuel, is now at the Growing Place.
Sherry Yingling, director of the Growing Place, says it has been referred to as the “Taj Mahal” of day-care centers. The two-year-old center has 8,800 square feet and room for 140 children. It’s unusual to see a center that large on a small, liberal-arts campus. Its most-unusual feature are the child-high windows that connect each room.
In addition to its work-life benefits, Gettysburg is also known for being supportive of faculty members. Caroline A. Hartzell, a professor of political science, started a globalization-studies program three years ago with the college’s encouragement. Now it ranks among the top 10 most-popular majors on campus. “Gettysburg has allowed me to do so many things,” she says.
Junior faculty members can get a full semester’s paid leave to work on research after their third year at Gettysburg. Ms. Russell, the head of theater arts, took advantage of the leave program and wrote two articles that helped her earn tenure.
Ms. Riggs, the president, says she is herself proof that Gettysburg is a great place to work: She returned here to teach psychology while finishing up her doctorate from Princeton University and never left. “I find Gettysburg to have a tremendous sense of community, and to me that matters a lot,” she says.