From staying on campus to traversing the globe, sabbaticals offer professors the ability to focus on their research with a generous amount of freedom.
Sabbatical is a period of paid leave, offered to faculty members of a certain rank. It is available to those who have been working at the University for a certain amount of time. During this period, faculty do not have to attend to their usual teaching and administrative responsibilities and can instead focus on research or other work.
At Brown, junior faculty members are allowed one semester of sabbatical. Another semester is offered after earning tenure. After that, every six semesters that a professor is in residence and teaching, they can earn one semester of sabbatical.
The Herald spoke to four professors who have recently gone on sabbatical or plan to do so in the next year to learn more about their plans and experiences.
David Weil
In 2022-23, Professor of Economics David Weil ’82 spent one year away from his professorial duties, combining a semester of sabbatical with a semester of leave without pay.
Weil spent half of this year abroad, teaching mini-courses and seminars at universities around the world and the other half on College Hill conducting research.
“A large fraction of our job is research,” Weil said. “What sabbatical is for, then, is to give you concentrated research time … How people use that has a lot to do with what field they’re in.”
He visited a lengthy list of countries over the year: he started in South Korea and Japan, then traveled to Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Colombia, spent some time in Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates, and finished in Europe, visiting Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, England and Italy.
While Weil’s work often involves travel, he said that combining those opportunities in one year was “pretty unusual.”
His previous sabbatical was spent completely at Brown. But now, with his kids graduating from high school, he and his wife traveled the world.
Weil presented about the economic impact of climate change, using data sets from organizations like NASA and the Food and Agriculture Organization.
Weil also conducted field research in some of the countries he visited, like South Korea and the UAE, examining population issues such as the replacement level of fertility and migration issues, respectively.
While he spent time away from campus, he emphasized that the sabbatical isn’t a break period.
“If you’re a faculty member at a research university, you’re supposed to be doing research, and you’re supposed to be publishing research,” Weil said. “That’s what we were all trained for.”
Michelle Clayton
Michelle Clayton, an associate professor of comparative literature and Hispanic studies, is taking a similarly international route.
Clayton intends to stay in Paris this fall, following up on a project from her last year-long sabbatical in 2016-17. She added that she may end up staying in France for a full year if her fellowship application is approved.
Her previous work in Paris focused on “the under-explored place of dance in the historical avant-garde,” examining the intersection of dance with writers, artists, musicians and other creators, she explained.
This upcoming semester, she plans to “tie up loose ends” from the previous project and start a book on contemporary flamenco dancer Israel Galván. She also plans to write a manuscript focusing on “the place of museums in modern Latin American literature, poetry and the visual arts.”
Clayton explained that there are different approaches to how time should be spent during sabbatical. Some use it as a time to “recharge and play around with new ideas,” while others look at it as a period of intense productivity, she wrote in an email to the Herald.
She described her approach as closer to the former, using her sabbatical as a time to hone her skills in a language or a dance practice and apply them later on in her writing and teaching.
There’s often pressure on professors to produce research during sabbatical, Clayton said, but “the timing of sabbaticals doesn’t always align with where a researcher is in terms of being able to produce: Sometimes we really need the time to explore and carry out initial research before entering into periods of more intense productivity.”
Like Weil, Clayton added that many factors affect how and where a sabbatical is spent. In her case, Clayton and her husband, who also teaches at Brown, try to take their sabbaticals at the same time.
Eric Darling
Eric Darling, an associate professor of medical science, engineering and orthopaedics, remained on campus during his sabbatical last year.
Darling said that choosing to spend a sabbatical on campus is not an “unusual” choice for any professor, especially those with young kids.
He was able to combine two sabbaticals for a full year’s worth of leave, the maximum time a professor can take off from teaching.
“Sabbatical is there to try to just learn and further our research capabilities and education, but it’s also to decompress a little bit from being a full-time faculty” member, Darling said.
During his sabbatical year, Darling focused his energy on research projects, aiding students who were facing issues with their work and submitting manuscripts, papers and grants.
He said that the flexibility of leave gave him the time to work on these different projects.
Despite the leeway professors are given to pursue their research, there remains an expectation to continue putting out work during their time away, Darling added.
“It’s not vacation,” he said. “It’s meant to just recharge us and energize our creative juices and get excited about teaching and research and everything that we do as faculty, but you still have that productivity.”
Despite that pressure, “it’s a wonderful perk to have as a faculty member,” Darling remarked.
James Egan
James Egan, a professor of English, who is currently planning for a full year of sabbatical next year, intends to follow a similar path for a full-year of sabbatical next year.
Egan studies English literature by British colonists in the United States. He said that there is no better place to conduct his research than on Brown’s campus. He specifically noted the John Carter Brown Library, a rare book library that he called “one of the best, if not the best in the world” for his specialty.
He plans to work on research for an upcoming book on “pedagogy gamification” with Naomi Pariseault, a senior learning designer at Brown.
Egan explained that his plans for sabbatical are common for faculty in his department.
“We’re all working on books,” he said. “I don’t think there is much variety in the tenured faculty.”
But choosing to stay on campus is an unusual choice for a humanities professor, according to Egan.
“It’s hard to write a book, and there are a lot of distractions around here,” Egan explained. He added that most humanities professors tend to go “far away” to do their research and work on their books. But he said that coming to work every day is a part of his daily routine that he doesn’t want to change during his sabbatical.
Echoing other professors’ sentiments, Egan agreed that there’s significant pressure on professors to continue putting out work during sabbatical.
After completing sabbatical, professors must file a report to University administration detailing what they did during their time away from teaching. Egan added that the administration grants “a great deal of leeway” to professors, allowing them to determine for themselves how much and what type of work they want to pursue.
According to Egan, the incentive to continue producing research during sabbatical is directly tied to a pay raise for tenured or tenure-track faculty.
“If I come back from my leave and I can show no evidence of research productivity, I will not get much of a pay raise, if any at all,” Egan said.
Still, Egan expressed immense gratitude for the ability to take a sabbatical.
“I feel really lucky to be in a position where I have this,” he said.
Samah Hamid is a senior staff writer at the Herald. She is from Sharon, Massachusetts and plans to concentrate in Biology. In her free time, you can find her taking a nap, reading, or baking a sweet treat.
