About First sabbatical
Professor Adam Chapnick documents how to properly organize your first research leave.
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Explaining a sabbatical to non-academics
My wife and I recently had a number of people over who we had not seen in a while. None of them were academics. While we were all talking, it came up that I was on sabbatical.
Those friends who are less familiar with the university environment were too polite to suggest that they were envious of what they perceived as my six-month holiday. Even those who knew that I wasn’t on an extended vacation didn’t instinctively understand what the next six months would entail.
I admit to being particularly sensitive when it comes to assumptions about academics’ work ethics – too many of my military colleagues kid almost too seriously about what professors really do when they are ‘working from home’ – and I’ve therefore thought a lot about how I might explain my sabbatical plans to a skeptical audience.
The approach I took in this case was to talk about how my terms of work were defined (40% teaching, 40% research, and 20% service) and how I was supposed to demonstrate that I’d fulfilled each element. The teaching is straightforward, and just about everyone has sat on a committee of some sort and can therefore understand the concept of service, so the key was to explain research.
I spoke about how my research output was measured primarily in terms of published books and journal articles. I can write during the academic year, I explained, but the research necessary to produce a book about Canada in world affairs requires extended consultation with sources and records that are not available online.
Without a period of extended leave from teaching and service (the Canadian Forces College’s academic year is 10 ½ months long), I simply can’t piece together the time necessary to get the research done. My next sixth months will therefore see me working harder than ever, since I know that I have a limited amount of time to explore the available archival sources.
This explanation went over well, but I was speaking among friends. If my sabbatical plan had been simply to write, and my audience had been less sympathetic, it would have been a more challenging conversation.
But it would have been one that I should have been ready to have nonetheless.
At a time of significant government cutbacks, it’s particularly important that academics are able to articulate and publicly defend the value of what we do when we aren’t in the classroom.
If we can’t do that effectively, we risk incurring some of the potential consequences that are now regularly contemplated across the border.
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5 Responses to “Explaining a sabbatical to non-academics”
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Although the simple requirement for extra research time is obvious, I have found that sabbaticals are even more important for the development of new ideas and new research skills (I’m in the biological sciences). During all my sabbaticals, I collaborated with colleagues, far from home (mostly in England), in areas of research that I would never have been able to do on my own. The benefit of cross-fertilization of ideas and actions that accompany a sabbatical leave cannot be over-emphasized. My last sabbatical (2007/08) got me into the field of the mechanical properties of insect cuticle. When I got home after 14 months away, it led to collaboration with a real engineer (!), and this has been so incredibly rewarding to both of us. The research that we continue to explore could never have even been contemplated by either of us alone.
I would also strongly encourage young colleagues to take their sabbaticals far from home, even preferably in other countries, for the obvious social and cultural benefits. I sometimes hear colleagues say that they don’t want to “disrupt my children’s education”. How sad, how sad! What incredible benefits our son had from his “disrupted education” in a foreign country during his early teenage years!
Well, academics seem to have done a poor job explaining or defending the importance of sabbaticals as evidenced by the increased use of term employees, who have no such right.
Glad you were able to explain the situation in a way your friends could understand. As with many explanation, the important thing is to match it with the context. Many people have a hard time understanding what research entails, even if you describe the whole process (I’m teaching field research, these days). So it’s nice that the match happened.
Thing is, even within academia, some people seem to have misconceptions about sabbaticals, Not that they’re taken to be vacations, but they became so associated with a reward system that they seem not to have their own purpose, anymore.
I’m part-time faculty, so I don’t get sabbaticals in that same sense. And, among the many sources of bitterness among contingent faculty members is the fact that we don’t get the opportunity to apply for sabbaticals. Unlike many of my colleagues, I’m not bitter about my position outside of the tenure-track. And while I understand the importance of sabbaticals, I perceive them as one option among others, to make possible a certain type of academic work. Sabbaticals might even blind some people into misunderstanding their own work.
These are issues with PTR (“Promotion, Tenure, Reappointment”). In that context, the formula used to calculate rewards in the tenure system has become something more of a bureaucratic requirement, and less of a reflection of that work. The percentages themselves are often misleading, as many a professor integrates several of these activities together. When it becomes reality, the dream of cross-fertilization between teaching and research makes percentages more of an accounting exercise than an assessment of the actual work being done. Attempts at making one’s work more efficient often pushes professors to focus their teaching and service work on things which can contribute to their “research output”. And the very categorization of academic work in these three little boxes has been the object of much discussion. Academics typically want to be free to do the work they want to do and are in fact so driven by intrinsic motivation that they’re likely to work more when they’re free to decide how they spend their time.
Something I’ve noticed at institutions where research is the primary thing (for instance, at “Research I” universities in the US) is that not-insignificant number of faculty members have a tendency to publish a rather large number of very similar papers, as if publication were its own goal. At more “comprehensive” institutions (including Concordia, but also a satellite campus in a state university system in the US), it’s not uncommon for faculty members to frequently publish book-length accounts on diverse topics, even though books are often considered as not counting for PTR purposes.
To be clear, I’m not saying that the overwhelming majority of research professors “keep publishing the same article over and over again”. But there is an intriguing pattern in terms of the research focus whereby it may become more about lines in an annual report, whereas research by professors who primarily teach may be more of a “labour of love”.
In other words, while an article can certainly require a lot more work than a book, there has been a tendency for certain research-heavy professors to focus on numerical output instead of on breadth. In the process, the “dissemination” goal of publication may get lost. Not blaming these faculty members, in this. They’re caught in a very constraining system. But the effect remains that some of them may “go through the motions, because they have to” instead of developing the type of research career which is likely to benefit society as a whole.
So, back to sabbaticals… One reason they function in context may be that they allow a sort of “reset”. They bring research back to its roots in deep curiosity and passion for knowledge. Sure, much of it has to do with the time needed to conduct a research project. In field research, it’s obvious that extended field trips are qualitatively different from short stints in the field. In many situations, it is in fact impossible for a scholar to accomplish her work while teaching in even the shortest and least time-consuming of contexts. You simply cannot be in two places at the same time.
But I sincerely think (based on diverse contacts with colleague) that much of the effect felt subjectively by researchers during sabbaticals has more to do with putting things in their proper perspective. During these extended periods of time devoted to their research work, researchers are allowing themselves to explore. While they do have a responsibility to bring back something rather impressive from their time spent away from their more quotidian departmental lives, this pressure is somewhat more indirect, and is less likely to constrain them to “think in the short term”. Chances are relatively high that, during her sabbatical, a given scholar will have an epiphany, will make an life-changing discovery, will go through an actual shift in paradigm, or will cause a sudden leap in scholarship. Any of these things depends on a large amount of work but, mostly, they require a lot of freedom. And freedom is almost the “currency of academia”.
Which brings me back to my own situation outside of the tenure system.
While tenure (and sabbaticals which depend on it) may be associated with academic freedom, there are other ways to be free in academic contexts. One approach which is rarely discussed is to act more as a “free agent” and less as “departmental property”. Belonging to an academic department brings many benefits but it can also be quite constraining. On the opposite end, “contract teaching” can sound extremely constraining but also brings about its own type of freedom. While a tenured professor who goes on sabbatical may accomplish impressive work because she’s free to do so, contingent academic workers are also contributing important work because they are free to work outside of departmental routine. It may well be that, taken on its own, the work of a given adjunct may be much less impressive than that of any full professor. But, in aggregate, contingent academic labour allows for a different type of contribution to knowledge and social change. The same can be said about many non-academics, of course. Several of them could take advantage of a sabbatical, once in a while. In fact, I’ve done a bit of work for a foundation (Carold Institute) which provides for something like a sabbatical for non-academics in the form of a fellowship in support of leaders in community organizations and in diverse spheres of voluntary action.
The fact that sabbaticals are restricted to tenured faculty members isn’t just a matter of rewards and privilege. It’s also about putting research work in its proper context.
This was a very thoughtful post, Alexandre. Thank you. I’ll be thinking about it and reflecting on elements of it in a subsequent post. -Adam
My father took a sabbatical in Wales when I was 18, and my first year university was at University College Cardiff. Not only did he learn a lot studying occupational lung diseases that were similar in Wales as in Nova Scotia (miner’s lung, farmer’s lung, etc), but I had my eyes opened so wide in academic as well as non-academic areas, which were the most important. (I could have lost academic time because I was not ready for the math in the first year physics class, but I received two credits — one first and one second year — for zoology (biology) and chemistry when I returned home to Canada to continue my studies.
That year was as valuable to me as a young person, as to my father, and I would urge everyone to consider the unfathomable growth that comes from living abroad when they worry about disrupting their children’s lives. I never would have learned and seen the things I did, that shaped me for a lifetime… (I am in my 50′s now). I am not sure that it would have been so mind-opening if we had gone to Southern California (I lived there later,) but globalization in outlook is a great thing.