The academic sabbatical is hidden curriculum, too--wtf!?
Why do we shroud this unique, important opportunity in mystery?!
.jpg){kind=link}
I’m writing today about a bit of a “champagne problem”—a dilemma that is arguably minor and very relative. And yet, it will also be directly and daily relevant to me for the next year.
I have the incredible good fortune to be on a professional development leave from now until the fall term begins in 2026.1 This is university speak for “sabbatical for people not on the tenure track,” so I’m just going to call it a sabbatical. Given everything going on, an academic sabbatical is not to be taken for granted these days. Even so, higher ed is one sector where sabbaticals are still “normal.” And, just as we can leverage the resources of academia to make the world better, we can do all sorts of meaningful, change-the-world work during a sabbatical. To do so, we must understand how a sabbatical operates, how to apply for one, and how to handle being approved for one.
However, until quite recently, I didn’t know any of these things because:
I’m a first-gen academic.
I’m not on the tenure-track.
It’s possible you’re in the same boat. But, it’s also possible you face neither of those hurdles, might have a sabbatical in your future, and still don’t really know “what’s behind the curtain” when it comes to sabbaticals.
You’re not alone.
Overall, academics don’t seem to discuss sabbaticals much, certainly not at my institution. But this week I discovered there's also a surprising, wholesale void on the internet when it comes to sabbaticals. I find this dearth of information bizarre given the idea of a sabbatical is no secret in our sector. But, I’ve had to fully internalize that sabbaticals, too, are part of the hidden curriculum of higher ed.
In ecology and scicomm, there are, of course, the occasional announcements of someone embarking on one (and perhaps pausing or reducing posting frequency on their blog/newsletter). There are a handful from folks discussing aloud how they plan to use their sabbatical (or research leave). One PI detailed the discussion he had with his research group about his upcoming sabbatical. A few folks (like this one) have written about the financial considerations of sabbaticals (which are highly inequitable). And there are a few posted reflections on how someone’s sabbatical went.
But, I actually only found one post2 from my overlapping fields that discussed the bureaucratic/social capital side of sabbatical planning.3
This is the gap that surprises me.
We need to be able to navigate the process of securing supervisor approval, applying, and getting institutional approval before we actually have to figure out where to live, how to top-up our salaries, etc. However, these initial aspects of getting a sabbatical (and really most aspects of a sabbatical) don’t seem to get the thorough treatment other career decisions/opportunities receive in the ecology and scicomm academic blogosphere.
So, today, I’m writing about a few things I’ve learned in the last year or so, as I prepared to apply, wrote the application, and then sorted out the ramifications of being approved:
Like so many things in academia that we are supposed to be good at, academia offers no training and no candid discussion around sabbaticals. That makes a sabbatical a fairly fraught opportunity: It’s a remarkable, unique leave we’re unprepared for, and there are strings attached.
The university does have expectations of productivity and reporting after I’m done (albeit very vague ones), and future sabbatical approvals are weighed against those expectations. But, there’s no concrete guidance on the actual expectations, how to meet them, and how to compellingly report on my sabbatical outcomes.
At least at my institution, the true limiting factor for being approved for sabbatical seems to be support from the department head, followed by support from the dean; although it is Academic Affairs who officially makes decisions. These conclusions are based purely on inference—there is no transparency or written down policy we can reference to understand how these approval decisions are made.4 It’s worth trying to figure out how this works at your institution, so you can calibrate your application (and persuasive hall convos) accordingly.
Moreover, there are virtually no concrete resources and only vague guidance to inform anyone’s rhetoric in their application for sabbatical at my university. (I doubt this is different at most others.) The best I could come up with was a list I found, buried deep on our Academic Affairs website, that names folks who had been approved for sabbaticals at my institution, along with a 3-sentence summary of their proposed work. I reviewed the past decade of these, then asked everyone on the list who was non-tenure-track (8:94; NTT) for their applications, as examples to guide my own. But, I’m in a peculiar type of NTT position: professor of practice. It’s not much like the lecturer position which is our most common NTT type here. So, the examples folks shared for instructional professional development weren’t entirely apt. Neither were the approved applications shared with me by research-active, recently tenured folks. These folks have full-blown research programs that were launched with major start-up funding (which I never received). So, their level of productivity, and thus what they could accomplish on sabbatical, are considerably different from mine. I basically used these examples for formatting, but I was on my own for crafting a rhetorically compelling application.
I already knew an academic sabbatical is not a vacation. It’s not time off work, no more than we take summers “off” if we’re on a 9-month faculty contract. What I didn’t know is that the sabbatical specifically affects my job description to prioritize one aspect of my work. Typically, my job description includes the following: 50% Teaching, 20% Research & Creative Activity, 25% Admin, 5% Service.5 For my sabbatical year, my job description is 100% Research, even though my proposed work extends beyond “pure” Research. Nevertheless, the fact remains that I am employed by a university and still have a job to do.
Despite the expectation that I continue to work full-time, taking a year of sabbatical at my institution means a 40% pay cut for the year. That is a serious reduction, and it’s affecting planning for many aspects of my personal and professional lifestyle, as well as posing considerable constraints on what travel I can pursue during my leave.
No one I know seems aware of (or is talking about) planning/decision-making resources, although there are quite a few (if you’re willing to search for and “translate” from corporate sabbatical tools and books to reflect on/plan your academic leave)6. Essentially, we’re flying by the seat of our pants on what is supposed to be a major, meaningful period of rejuvenation, creativity, and research/professional development. This set up leaves us largely exposed to failure and/or “under optimizing” this opportunity—an irrational but pervasive situation in academia.
Put another way, there is no real map for an academic sabbatical. The handful of folks I’ve talked with have approached theirs wildly differently. Some folks go live abroad for a whole year. Others take several trips to collaborators or for field work (domestic and international). Still others do a “stay-batical” and mostly do their work from where they already are. From what I can tell, there are myriad pros and cons to each of these approaches. The wide range of options is both an opportunity and a challenge at the proposal/application stage and for the practical side of things if we get approved.
Do not over-commit! As is true with grant proposals, promising too much makes a sabbatical proposal less compelling! The majority of approved sabbaticals at my institution over the past decade (n=94) had a single, major focus, proposed a few complementary activities therein (<3), and projected a feasible handful of outputs (e.g., some limited combo of papers, grants, talks, trainings offered/taken, curriculum design, book, etc.). (Stay tuned for a future post detailing the analysis I did of this data set.)
But don’t under-promise. It is essential that your application make clear that what you propose is both feasible and yet could not be done within the scope of your typical workload. The successful applications I saw made (concisely) clear why they actually needed the break from teaching, admin, and service to pursue their sabbatical activities. Making that case is not optional. Otherwise, why would anyone think you need leave from the rest of your responsibilities?!
I found zero mention of how to draw-down or somehow sustain administrative work that you either must/want to keep going—but would prefer someone else ran while you’re on leave—or intend to ramp back up/resume when you get back. I didn’t even find useful decision-making guides for thinking through whether you might pause, end, or delegate such things. I’m talking about programs, initiatives, training programs that aren’t credit-bearing, etc. I am involved with things that fit all three of those categories, and in an ideal world, I’d take a break from them all for the next year. That would enable me to truly focus on the research and skill development in my sabbatical proposal. But, in most cases, I am the person (or half of a duo) making those programs and trainings happen. And I’m really ambivalent about shutting them down totally for the year. So far, I am just kicking that decision down the road.
Finally, following a real web search effort and a lively conversation with several colleagues, I’ve concluded: there are no stated rules for how one conveys they are on sabbatical. (I’m going to discuss this one further next week.)
Bottom line: if you’re finding it hard to figure out what you should actually write in a sabbatical/professional leave proposal/application, what the true rules are for getting approved at your institution, how to juggle all the other loose threads of your work if you get one, and how to balance what you want to do versus what might actually be institutionally approved…well, you’re in good company. You’re not failing to figure out something the rest of us already know. There seem to be virtually no rules, very little public discussion, and if there are norms/traditions for deciding yes/no about your application, they seem to be held close to the chest of administrators above the applicant’s pay grade!
How about you?
Have you considered or applied for a sabbatical? What kinds of guidance, support, or examples did you have access to for the application? And, if you were approved or denied, did you get any real information about (a) why, and (b) what to actually do with that information moving forward?
Please contribute to our collective efforts to support each other and make the world a bit better. You can share, like, and comment on School of Good Trouble by subscribing, gifting a subscription, and referring a friend.
Well, technically, I’m on a nine-month contract, and my summer non-contract period began a few weeks ago. But, I am receiving summer salary this year for the same work I’ve been approved to do over my sabbatical, so functionally, the sabbatical starts now. Same goes for next summer’s work, hence my conceptualizing the full scope of this leave as mid-May 2025-mid-August 2026.
I ran a series of searches, including “ecology sabbatical” (the most fruitful search), “sabbatical etiquette,” and “sabbatical+*” with the * standing in for well-known blogs like Dynamic Ecology, Oikos, etc. Using the search “academic writing studies sabbatical” led to the only sabbatical proposal/application advice I found. It was remarkably brief, and while not wrong, it didn’t actually decode the “game” of applying to your institution. Otherwise, most of the hits for that search were also about “how to use your sabbatical time” and “making the most of your sabbatical,” etc.
While it’s not currently relevant to my circumstances, I did also find one detailed and thoughtful post about taking a grad student sabbatical.
What I do know is that I talked with numerous colleagues in several different departments and colleges/schools on campus. While six people in my department were approved for sabbaticals (of various lengths) for the upcoming academic year, in other departments or colleges, only a set number of people will be recommended up to Academic Affairs. Your application will be stronger if you know the degree of competition you face (if any), at what level decisions are made, and thereby, whose priorities you need to account for.
Even though I’m in an NTT position, the “bins” of my job description are actually quite similar to my tenure-track/tenured colleagues. The difference is just in the percentages.
The one book I’ve looked at so far is The Art of the Sabbatical: A Money and Mindset Guide for Your Next Work Break. It’s useful if you’re looking for a process for envisioning and planning (including financial management). But, with its focus beyond academia, it doesn’t address the politicking that may be required in your application or in priming supervisors to support your application in the first place.