The idea of scientists' taking sabbaticals can seem a lot like the plot of an old movie: The lead characters run off from the tedium of their everyday lives for something new and exciting. And whether it's for a few weeks or a year, they almost always return home, recommitted to the life they've chosen.
"It's the best benefit we academics have," says Peter Milgrom, a professor of dental-public-health sciences at the University of Washington at Seattle. "What other job can you think of that lets you take off for a year to do something completely different?"
Most sabbaticals range from six months to a year and give academic researchers a reprieve from teaching, administrative duties, and committee work. Professors can hole up in their own lab or plant themselves in a willing colleague's.
And the benefit isn't limited to university professors with a lot of overhead. Medical researchers can take advantage as well, although they might face the prospect of finding someone to cover any patients they might be seeing. Even some private companies value the seven-year break for their staff members, although few if any allow a year off. The biotech company Genentech in San Francisco, for example, offers its employees a six-week break after six years of "hard work," says a company spokesman, Amy Gartner. "It's all about recharging their batteries. They can travel, spend time with their families, take classes. We certainly don't ask what they'll be doing."
Various Itches to Be Scratched
Scientists take sabbaticals for a lot of reasons, some personal, some professional. Among professors taking their first sabbatical, the most common reason is the desire to learn a new research technique. Richard T. Robertson, a professor of anatomy and neurobiology at the University of California at Irvine, is a veteran of two sabbaticals -- one 16 years ago when he traveled to Switzerland and another in the fall of 2000 when he stayed in his own laboratory.
Until his first leave, he had been studying how brains develop in rats, and he wanted to be able to culture neurons in a petri dish. He used his sabbatical to travel to a Swiss laboratory that had pioneered the type of culture he was interested in applying to his studies. There he learned how to manipulate neurons outside of a rat.
"As scientists," Robertson says, "it's so important to have free time to think. Sabbaticals give you unstructured time to think creatively about things."
Sometimes researchers take a sabbatical to get new experimental systems up and running, such as learning how to breed plants or how to care for and mutate fruit flies for genetic experiments. Long before I became an embittered graduate student, my adviser invited a researcher from a small Northwestern college to spend time in our lab, mastering the growth and purification of a virus that chronically infected yeast. This approach to examining how viruses reproduce in their host was new to all of us, and we hoped to study it. Our collaborations continued for several years after he left, although we never surmounted all the glitches.
Erik Jorgensen, an associate professor of biology at the University of Utah, also knows the risks of tackling new organisms or scientific methods, and the importance of taking the time to focus on them. He spent the past year in Paris, where he worked out the details of detecting certain features of worms that had been subjected to electron microscopy. He explains: "I had a couple experimental things to get working, too experimental to give to anyone in my lab. My time's expendable!" Or perhaps he means it's expendable in the context of spending a year surrounded by French art, food, and cafes.
Writing manuscripts or grants is another reason that researchers jump at the chance to take a sabbatical. Milgrom, the dental-health-sciences professor, focused on writing new grant proposals while on his third sabbatical. "I went to Italy, lived on the edge of a farm, and spent my time writing a $9-million proposal for a new research center," which, he is happy to say, got financed. Although he spent some of his time traveling and lecturing in Europe, the main purpose of his getaway was to allow him to focus on planning the university's new Dental Fears Research Center.
At Home or Away?
Perhaps one of the best advantages of the sabbatical, professors say, is the opportunity to travel abroad and meet researchers from other cultures. Jorgensen, the Utah biologist, checked out laboratories in four or five different countries before deciding on joining the one in France that happened to be run by a former postdoc of his. After spending the past year ironing out problematic laboratory techniques and meeting many foreign colleagues, he highly recommends an international sabbatical. "This has nothing to do with scientific reasons, but get out of the country," he says.
Often, foreign hosts can arrange for a scientist to lecture in a variety of places, providing an opportunity to defer the cost of travel.
Some researchers are held back from spending a sabbatical abroad by family reasons. Their spouse may have a job and can't get away. A couple may be reluctant to pull their children out of school. "Going away for a year is a significant barrier with two-income families, says Milgrom, the dental-health sciences professor. "Sometimes you just can't afford it." A distant sabbatical also requires a certain bravery. "Fear is a big factor" for why people stay home, he says, "between children being out of school and renting out your house for a year."
Other researchers spend their sabbaticals at home for professional reasons. Their labs may have just been stocked with inexperienced research assistants who need guidance and can't be left for an extended period.
After eight years as department chairman, Robertson decided a sabbatical was just the thing to get out from under the bureaucratic rigamarole and back to the bench. "I was drowning in paperwork and trivia," he says. "I wanted the opportunity to get away from my administrative duties and catch up on my manuscript writing." So, he took an in-house sabbatical, where he learned to say no to colleagues. "I wish I'd counted how many times a conversation started with, 'I know you're on sabbatical leave, but ...' I had the opportunity to say no many times a week."
Handling the Logistics
Most universities have a standard policy regarding sabbaticals. They usually require approval from the department head and perhaps from the upper administration. The department may need to find replacements to teach your classes or take over your administrative duties, so plan ahead. The university often pays a portion of the scientist's salary during the sabbatical, and some grants will pick up the slack.
Researchers should also let their grant agencies know they'll be gone. "One thing I didn't know is you need to transfer grants to some other professor in the department" while you're on sabbatical, Jorgensen says. "My grant money stopped. Also, I didn't count on having to deal with grant renewals, which came as a huge surprise. I didn't have my file cabinets -- everything was three times as hard."
Paying taxes, many of these professors say, was easy to manage. Milgrom recommends picking up the book Tax Guide for College Teachers. It contains information that most accountants aren't aware of, he says. For example, income taxes on the sabbatical salary for researchers who spend their break out of the country are handled differently if the leave is for longer than a year than for shorter periods. Renting out your house is tax deductible as well.
E-mail and the Internet have made the day-to-day logistics of going away much easier, Milgrom says: "Paying bills used to be very complicated. But with electronic banking, it's not such a big deal anymore."
Whether the researchers left their institution or stayed in their labs, they all appreciated the time "off."
"It's supposed to be a time for rest and relaxation," Robertson says, "but it's rare that anyone takes sabbatical leave to rest."
