I Was Away From My Desk

A recent post over here reminded me that I have been meaning to write about the sabbatical I took a few years ago. I blogged the entire time I was on sabbatical, although I did not blog about my sabbatical.

When I was just starting to think about going on sabbatical, I mused in a post about the possible differences between going on a sabbatical with an elementary-school child (as I did for my first sabbatical, to an international location) and going on a sabbatical with a teenager (as I was planning for my second sabbatical, to a different international location). There were many comments about positive sabbatical-with-teen experiences, and so it turned out for us. We are very fortunate to have an adventurous and healthy teenager who was willing to leave her school and friends for a while and hurl herself into a strange environment. She loved our sabbatical, and her parents enjoyed it as well.

I know that not everyone can go away for their sabbatical and that not everyone wants to do that even if they can. And for those who can spend some or all of their sabbatical at another institution, there are of course many possible choices in terms of location and type of institution to visit. For me, sabbatical = international location, or at least it has so far (n = 2). At one point in our pre-sabbatical planning discussions, my husband suggested that we spend all or part of our sabbatical at a Certain Domestic University and I thought he was joking. He wasn't, but he was happy to go to an international university that had excellent colleagues for both of us.

For the type of sabbatical arrangement at my institution (50% salary while on sabbatical), it takes a lot of planning and effort to attempt to raise the rest (not to mention the usual summer salary). The reasoning behind the 50% salary is that we aren't teaching while on sabbatical, so we are paid only for the research-component of our job (on the not-so-accurate but what-the-heck assumption that the research-teaching ratio is approximately 50:50). I know that some institutions have better arrangements for sabbatical pay, but so far I have been able to manage with the 50% system.

And what of those left behind -- our students, postdocs, research scientists, others? (see older post here) I was quite unperturbed by my advisor's sabbatical when I was a grad student. Even though he went to an international university for the year, I felt that in some ways I had more of his attention than when he was just down the hall. When he was away, I emailed him and he emailed me back. Sometimes I just sent him an update by email (he told me later that he appreciated this). Sometimes I emailed him a question, and he sent useful replies. I had seldom had his attention like that before. He had many grad students, many grants, many projects, and lots of professional and institutional service activities, and I was not very assertive (in person) about getting his attention.

During my advisor's sabbatical, I also got help and advice as needed from more senior grad students, from research scientists, and from other faculty. The various labs kept running in his absence, and all was well.

I think/hope it was much the same during my own sabbaticals. And of course now, in addition to email, there is Skype, so one can participate in various meetings and other discussions with students, postdocs, and colleagues at the home institution.

Whether you go halfway across the world or stay at home, sabbaticals are great for the very reason they exist -- you have time to think, read, write, start new projects, meet new colleagues, and learn new things relevant to research and teaching. On my last sabbatical, I wrote a long paper that I probably would not have been able to write in non-sabbatical life and I developed a collaboration with some excellent new colleagues. My new colleagues and I are now working on plans to send our grad students to visit each other's institutions -- kind of like a mini-sabbatical for students(?).

If your department gets to keep the half of your salary that you are not getting while on sabbatical, your department head (or chair) might even be very happy that you want to take a sabbatical. He/she might complain about the problem of dealing with your classes while you are away but you need not be sympathetic to this. I know of some cases of people delaying or foregoing sabbaticals because of grumbling department heads. That should be the least of your concerns.

It might sound obvious to say "sabbaticals are great", but sabbatical planning can be very daunting and stressful for a wide range of complex reasons involving family, money, advisees, and research facilities, to name just a few key issues. Nevertheless, it's worth it if you can get all your ducks in a row, even if your ducks are mostly going to paddle around in a local pond.

Written Off

A colleague in another department was recently talking about what they liked most about a sabbatical, other than the obvious things. In this case, a favorite sabbatical benefit was: not having to write letters of recommendation. I was surprised by that choice (and not just because there is no way that this is better than not attending faculty meetings), but the conversation moved on and I didn't get a chance to ask for clarification.

I hope what this colleague meant was that, as a result of being far far away for the year and not teaching, some of the students who need a letter of reference from a professor who taught one of their classes will ask someone else. I doubt that this person refuses to write letters for graduate students or undergrads with whom they have had close interaction (e.g., as research assistants or interns or as students in more than one class). Even while on sabbatical, we still have responsibility for our advisees and other students, past and present, and that includes writing letters when needed.

I can see, however, that it would be nice to have a break from the letters that are really hard to write because you don't know much more about the student than what grade they got in the class, and maybe where they sat -- the latter not typically being interesting or relevant information in a letter of reference, although I've seen desperate faculty get a lame paragraph out of the fact that a student always sat in the front row. Even so, a respite from this type of letter-writing isn't on my list of ancillary-but-great-things-about-sabbaticals.

So, other than not attending faculty meetings, what else is on my list?

There isn't much, actually. It is nice to have the time to recharge and so on and spend time in a different interesting place with different interesting people and get a lot of thinking and writing and new research done, but those are the usual things. In fact, I am not desperate to get away from students or interruptions or my office or other things like that (including writing letters, even though I write a lot of letters). [I should note here that I do not have a killer teaching load; in a typical year, I am able to devote time to teaching and research.]

OK, I just came up with something else for my ancillary-but-great-things list, which now has two items on it. So here is the list:

1. not attending faculty meetings (I may have mentioned that one);
2. exams and grading

Sabbatical Scenarios

Last week I discussed Sabbatical Economics, and explained why paying a professor 1/2 of a 9-month salary every 7 years so they can focus on research or other creative endeavors can make both short- and long-term economic sense for an institution, not to mention for the individual on sabbatical.

Today I will discuss some another aspect of sabbaticals. Please write with questions or suggestions of sabbatical-themed topics I haven't covered.

Myth: Faculty on sabbatical abandon their students, occasionally checking in from the other side of the world (or country or town) just to make sure that everyone is working hard to keep the research machine ticking along while the absent faculty member does whatever it is professors do on sabbatical.

I certainly won't claim that no professors ever do this, but, from what I've seen, it isn't common.

When I was a graduate student and my adviser went on sabbatical, we kept in touch by e-mail, and this was fine with me. In fact, it was great because he had a rather large group of graduate students, most of them very assertive and verbally agile young men, and I never really felt like I had my adviser's attention to the extent that these guys did. In fact, these guys, who were my friends and mentors, were in some ways more aware of my research than my adviser was, although I typically talked to my adviser a few times a week to update him and ask questions.

The reason the sabbatical year was great for me was that I was better at sending frequent, articulate, informative e-mails than my fellow grad students were. I finally got my adviser's attention, and he later told me that he enjoyed these e-mails from me, and for the first time appreciated my work (and work ethic).

I have also enjoyed being a professor on sabbatical. On my last sabbatical, I went to Europe for most of an academic year, although I returned to the US once for some student preliminary exams. Everyone who needed to take their exam in a particular term and who needed/wanted me on their committee took their exams during the week I was back. It was an intense week, but it worked out well. And while I was away, my students were well taken care of by co-advisers or committee members or postdocs or each other, and we all kept in touch by e-mail etc. As far as I can tell, no one felt abandoned and no one's research progress suffered.

For my next sabbatical -- still a ways off but in the preparation stages -- I plan to have some research funds to pay for the travel of at least one graduate student to visit me to take advantage of the facilities and collaborations at the institute that has offered to host my sabbatical. There will also be other opportunities for travel home and abroad involving other colleagues and students (visits, conferences etc.), and, if all goes as planned, it's going to be very cool. I think my research group as a whole will benefit from my sabbatical, even if I'm the only one who will be jumping up and down chanting "No faculty meetings for a year, no faculty meetings for a year" with glee.

If a professor supervises a lab at their home institution, presumably they don't just leave untrained students to run around in it, tossing hazardous chemicals around and exposing themselves to radiation and carcinogens. Professors with labs like this typically have a supervising research scientist, highly trained technician, and/or colleagues who share the lab. Departments have safety officers, everyone in the lab should be trained in the relevant (and many irrelevant) safety issues, and there should be no problem if the supervising faculty member is not in residence for all or part of an academic year.

There are so many ways to stay connected these days, and so many interesting ways to involve students and postdocs in sabbatical-related research experiences, that a sabbatical can easily be an exciting opportunity, not as a selfish thing that faculty do if they don't care about their advisees.

In any case, sabbaticals are a normal part of academic life, and chances are that students and postdocs will be affected by the sabbatical or research leave of one or more faculty. It is therefore useful to discuss ways in which sabbaticals can be organized so that advisees are not inconvenienced or in any way harmed by an adviser's sabbatical.

Questions of the day:

If you have gone on sabbatical, how did you organize things to minimize disruptions for your research group?

If you are or have been a student or postdoc whose adviser/mentor went on sabbatical, how did you deal with the situation? Was it OK or a problem?

Sabbatical Dreaming

Sabbaticals can require preparation far in advance if one hopes to visit another institution/country/continent, so even though I am approximately midway between my last sabbatical and what I hope will be my next sabbatical, I have recently started thinking that I need to think about my next sabbatical. Thinking about thinking about something is not always the most effective means of getting something done, but it's a start.

In my department and in my family, sabbaticals take extra planning because my professor-spouse and I need (want? prefer? hope?) to take a sabbatical in the same year. For the last sabbatical, it took much longer than it should have for the previous department chair to agree that my husband and I could both have a sabbatical in the same year. The current chair is much more understanding about the 2-career-couple thing, but he wants at least 3 years advance notice. He has now been notified.

Now all we have to do is (1) agree on a place to go; and (2) get some funding (we are paid 50% of our salary during a sabbatical). I am not sure which one will be easier -- both have their challenges.

For the last sabbatical, my daughter was at a very portable age and was happy to have random adventures that her wise parents organized for her. It was challenging for her to be plunked into a new school in a new country, especially since she didn't know much of the language of that country, but within a few months she was speaking with some fluency in a new language, had made friends, and was very happy.

Our daughter's love of travel and adventure continues to this day, but the second-most-common sabbatical comment (after 'Where do you want to go?') that people make re. sabbaticals is that because my daughter will be a teenager for the next sabbatical, it's going to be difficult to get her to agree to go in the first place and life will be difficult once we get wherever we are going. So far, though, none of these dire predictions about going on sabbatical with a teenager have come from anyone who has done a sabbatical-avec-teen, though some have come from people who are not going to attempt a sabbatical trip because their offspring is/are of the teen species. I may have absolutely no idea what I am in for, but I can't imagine not going away for a sabbatical because my daughter will be a teenager.

As I was typing this, my department chair stopped by my office and said "I want to talk to you about your sabbatical." No, he did not want to talk about the fact that my daughter will be a teenager. He wanted to bring to my attention that it had just occurred to him that he will no longer be department chair that year, and perhaps I will be the next department chair, in which case I can't go on sabbatical.

I said: Do you mean to say that I would have to choose between being Department Chair and going on Sabbatical?

Yes, replied the Current Department Chair.

Hmm, let me think about that choice for a femtosecond, said I. And then: Sabbatical. Yes, I am pretty sure I would rather go on sabbatical than assume onerous administrative duties.

And furthermore, I thought but did not say, according to the way that my department/college does things, I would have to allow myself to be considered for the chair position, with no guarantee of attaining this lofty goal, and therefore my husband and I would have to stop all sabbatical planning in the event that I was selected, which is by no means as certain as the current chair thinks it would be. And then I might find myself with neither sabbatical nor chairpersonship. Yes, I definitely choose sabbatical*. I just don't know where it will be yet.


* As it turns out, today the Current Department Chair had the same conversation with my husband about our possibly forgoing our sabbaticals in the event that I would become Chair. I am glad I was not present for that conversation, although there is a remote possibility that my husband just laughed in a certain way he has when someone is saying something completely insane to him and he just wants them to go away. That is my hope, anyway.