The faculty approved a new sabbatical policy in March, but University officials are still gearing up for a long and uncertain implementation process.
"What we have voted on essentially is a principle, and not an implementation program," said Associate Dean of the Faculty Elizabeth Doherty, noting that "the devil is in the details."
The new policy, voted on at a March 6 faculty meeting, provides tenured professors three choices for sabbaticals - a semester-long leave at 75 percent of their normal salary after six semesters of teaching, a semester-long leave at full pay after 12 semesters of teaching or a yearlong leave at 75 percent pay after 12 semesters of teaching.
Under the existing system, professors can take a semester-long sabbatical at full pay after 12 semesters of teaching.
The new policy gives faculty more flexibility in planning sabbaticals and allows for 20 percent of the faculty to be on leave every semester.
To mitigate the loss of a professor on sabbatical, the policy allows departments to request additional funding to hire replacement instructors, though departments have already budgeted for sabbaticals under the old policy. The Office of the Dean of the Faculty plans to implement other programs to lessen the strain these leaves might put on the curriculum, Doherty said.
"We've budgeted for some full time, yearlong or semester-long visitors to provide continuity in departments," Doherty said.
But Doherty told The Herald the policy cannot take effect immediately because of the difficulty in determining how to count semesters toward sabbaticals accrued under the old policy. The old policy required professors to teach 12 consecutive semesters at Brown. Thus, many professors are already eligible for paid leave under the new system, which only requires six semesters of teaching.
If the policy were implemented today, "essentially half the faculty are eligible for sabbatical all at once," Doherty said.
University officials are considering models to avoid potentially disruptive effects, and Doherty said the aim is to "make sure that no one is any worse off, and no one is any better off in terms of timing their leaves."
An implementation policy must be set by the end of the semester, as professors historically request permission for upcoming sabbaticals from the Office of the Dean of the Faculty each January, Doherty said.
Though Luiz Valente, associate professor of Portuguese and Brazilian studies, is a critic of the policy because it doesn't necessarily fully fund sabbaticals, he said the change still comes at an opportune time for the University.
Under President Ruth Simmons' Plan for Academic Enrichment, the size of the faculty has grown - from 577 in 2001 to 679 today. Valente said the University would not have been able to handle more frequent sabbaticals before this growth.
While some departments may be hard hit by the new leave policy, the problems of faculty sabbaticals are nothing new for Barry Connors, professor of neuroscience and chair of the department.
With about 15 professors in his department, Connors said he faced six planned sabbaticals for the 2007-2008 academic year - almost halving his department. So a compromise was made, and in an effort to preserve the neuroscience course offerings, Connors managed to convince three professors to postpone their leaves by a year.
"Our department charts when every faculty member is due for a sabbatical, so we know which courses we'll need staffing for and which ones we will forgo that year," Connors said.
Doherty said such a scenario - a department chair asking professors to postpone a sabbatical - may become a University-wide trend to avoid teaching shortages.
"Our office is certainly working with chairs who want to smooth things out in that way," she said.
Connors also said his department is considering which courses need to be offered every year without fail. These "core courses" - such as introductory classes and key prerequisites - will be the absolute minimum his department will provide regardless of the number of professors on leave.
Such advance planning is exactly how Doherty hopes departments will deal with the new policy. In some cases, departments will need to chart sabbaticals three to four years in advance, she said.
Though increased sabbaticals - regardless of departmental planning - will mean students may not be able to avail themselves of some of the University's more popular faculty members, Valente told The Herald there are ways to overcome this obstacle.
"With good planning, I think we can inform the students about the courses which will not be taught," Valente said.
Though Connors agreed that planning would be essential to this new policy, he said there was a limit to what departments can reasonably do to compensate for sabbaticals.
Connors said, "You can only project things so far" in advance given faculty turnover and the possibility that long-planned sabbaticals may suddenly have to be altered or abandoned.
The policy's provision for reduced pay during some sabbaticals will be easier to accept in disciplines which have a bevy of other funding sources, while professors in other departments - especially in the humanities - may find additional funding for sabbaticals difficult to come by.
"Some departments will find (the new policy) easier to absorb than others," Doherty said of this point of contention regarding the policy.
"It would really create two classes of faculty," Valente said, arguing that he resisted any situation in which "a faculty member who is doing well - who is a good teacher, who is a good researcher - (is) not able to take a sabbatical because he or she is not able to take a cut in their pay."
Though Doherty said there are ongoing efforts to examine the newly approved policy, any plans to, as she called it, "double the policy" - or provide full pay for sabbaticals after six semesters of teaching - would not be possible in the short term due to financial constraints.
Valente opposed the new policy's pay cut for sabbaticals, but said he ultimately supported the initiative because the University "needed to do something about the sabbatical, and I'm glad we've moved into the direction of improving what we had before."
Like many supporters of the policy, Valente hailed sabbaticals as an opportunity for professors to "bring their research up to par."
"We give some time off to faculty members so that they can spend even more time on their subject and their teaching when they're not on sabbatical," he said.
As to the future, the results of this new policy and its successors still remain uncertain.
"I think there was an implicit promise on the part of the administration to keep improving the sabbatical policy," Valente said.
