Sabbaticals key part of recruitment

TIME TO GROW: Chad Jenkins, an associate professor of computer services at Brown University, researched public access to robotics through the Internet on his sabbatical. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS
TIME TO GROW: Chad Jenkins, an associate professor of computer services at Brown University, researched public access to robotics through the Internet on his sabbatical. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS

Chad Jenkins, an associate professor of computer science at Brown University, waited a few extra years to take his first sabbatical, but made sure when he did take time off, he made it count.
After nine years at Brown, Jenkins combined the six months of paid leave due tenure-track professors after six years of teaching with another half year of work paid for by a Silicon Valley robotics company.
Free to spend an entire year in California away from students, Jenkins researched public access to robotics through the Internet – what he describes as the “robot app store.” “It was really an opportunity to experience Silicon Valley, its strengths and disadvantages, and bring that experience back to Brown,” said Jenkins, now back teaching in Providence, “to build Providence into a stronger hub of innovation and … the next direction we need to go into.”
Outside of academia, taking six months or a year away from work to study, conduct research or finish a career-building, personal project is virtually unheard of. But at American colleges and universities, the sabbatical is an integral part of achieving most institutions’ twin missions of teaching and research.
And as Jenkins attests, most sabbaticals are far from faculty vacations.
While working in California, he kept in touch with students and colleagues in Providence using a Beam “remote-presence machine,” a computer monitor on wheels allowing him to teleconference, roam the halls and even conduct job interviews.
As elite American research universities have expanded over the last few decades and competition for star faculty has intensified, the sabbatical has become one more tool schools can use in their recruitment pitch.
In Rhode Island, most schools have maintained fairly traditional sabbatical policies: six months away from the classroom for tenure-track professors after their sixth year on the job.
But in the Ivy League, sabbaticals go beyond the industry standard, and Brown in recent years has been enhancing its sabbatical policy to stay competitive.
“Our sabbatical policy is sort of in line with our peer group, the Ivy-plus group that also includes schools like the University of Chicago, Stanford and Duke,” said Kevin McLoughlin, Brown’s dean of faculty. “But it is maybe a little less generous than some, the wealthiest ones with the largest endowments.” That super-wealthy group includes heavyweights such as Harvard and Brown President Christina H. Paxson’s former employer, Princeton.
In 2003, Harvard introduced eligibility for six-month sabbaticals after only six semesters of teaching.
With this in mind, Brown six years ago beefed up its sabbatical policy and began offering six-month sabbaticals after six semesters, instead of the usual 12, although professors using that shortened time-frame would only receive 75 percent of their salary.
The 75 percent-pay sabbaticals have met with modest interest from faculty members, McLoughlin said, and now Brown is looking to improve its time-away-from-teaching policy again.
In its draft strategic plan released last month, Brown singled out the sabbatical policy for improvement.
“Although improved from a decade ago, it is still not competitive with our peers,” the plan said. “In the coming decade we will strengthen support for sabbaticals and consider changes in the scheduling of courses and the structure of the academic calendar to provide faculty with concentrated blocks of time to enhance their scholarship, experiment with different teaching formats and engage with students outside of the classroom.”
McLoughlin, who was chairman of a committee looking at the sabbatical policy for the strategic plan, said his committee proposed offering full pay to professors who take a sabbatical after six semesters, instead of 75 percent pay.
“In the social sciences and humanities there is little opportunity for external funding, and that means faculty in those areas cannot afford to take 75 percent of a semester’s pay,” McLoughlin said. “We also think they are at a moment when they have just gotten through tenure review, and they usually have research they could complete if they had a free semester.”
In preparation for looking at the sabbatical policy, McLoughlin researched the history of the practice and looked at what Brown professors have done on their sabbaticals. The American sabbatical as we know it began at Harvard in the 1880s, McLoughlin said, and spread quickly to other top schools.
Originally, the purpose of time away from teaching was to give professors a chance to visit European, and especially German, universities held as models for American education.
The expectation was professors would return to this country enlightened and better teachers, benefiting the entire university more than their own careers.
Brown was the eighth American university to offer sabbaticals.
It was with the rise of the research university that the importance of sabbaticals started tilting toward the professors, who now use them to complete the projects that can elevate their career.
The importance of sabbaticals for research is another reason large research universities generally have more generous sabbatical policies than smaller schools.
At Rhode Island’s non-Ivy colleges, sabbatical policies track closely with the six months after six years of teaching standard.
Sabbaticals for University of Rhode Island professors are part of their union contract and come out roughly along the lines of the typical policy – after six years of tenure-track service, one month off for every year of service. That would equal one six-month semester if they take it immediately.
At Roger Williams University, the sabbatical is also part of a collective-bargaining agreement, and the first paid six-months off comes after seven years teaching.
Roger Williams Provost and Senior Vice President Andrew Workman said the sabbatical policy hasn’t changed in recent years, and there isn’t much push for it to now.
“What we find is we have very robust applications to all our positions, and we don’t see a need for more frequent sabbaticals,” Workman said.
Salve Regina University has kept the frequency and duration of sabbaticals constant in recent years – a semester after six years – but increased the number of professors who can be away from teaching at any given time from three to five.
Salve Dean and Provost Dean de la Motte said having competitive sabbaticals are useful in recruiting but their primary purpose at Salve is for faculty professional development. •

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