Will ‘Staffed Against Sabbatical’ Be Phased Out?

In the faculty meeting on the 4th of March, the topic of Staffed Against Sabbatical (SAS) was brought up by Meg Scharle, the head of the Committee on Academic Policy and Planning (CAPP). CAPP is tasked with advising the Dean of Faculty on Reed's academic policies dealing with classes, grades, and scheduling. They make the curriculum and approve new courses. Additionally, they have the responsibility of advising the Dean of Faculty on what departments should get the go-ahead to look for visiting and tenure-track positions. 

In order to understand what SAS really means and what issues might arise with phasing it out or keeping it, the Quest interviewed Biology Professor Derek Applewhite, a member of the CAPP, Michael Faletra, the chair of the English department, and Kristin Scheible, the chair of the Religion department. According to Applewhite, professors have the opportunity to go on sabbatical every six to seven years, and when a department is staffed against sabbatical, then there are enough professors to maintain the department as it was the year before, even with a professor gone. When a department is staffed against sabbatical, there is no need for the department to look for a visiting professor, since missing courses can be covered within the department. However, SAS brings many pros and cons, making it difficult for the college to decide whether to keep it or phase it out.

The pros of keeping SAS include saving university funds, decreasing the workload of staff, and better advising. Applewhite mentioned that looking for a visiting professor is time-consuming and costly, but by implementing SAS, departments would have no need to look for visiting professors. This also means that the professors who are already tenured and must look for replacements would not have to stress about finding someone while also having to do their own independent research. Faletra adds that “each search requires many dozens of hours of commitment from each faculty member on the search committee, and even if one is not on the committee one has to attend the job talks, etc., in order to make a good hire… the American Academy of University Professors, the Modern Language Association, and many other professional organizations have noted that the increased reliance on contingent faculty (that is, visiting faculty and adjunct faculty), the more power is in the hands of administrations, the less is in the hands of the permanent faculty, and the more the academic freedoms associated with tenure will be eroded…and having more visitors and fewer tenured and tenure-track faculty will also mean more pressure on the permanent faculty who are here to serve on faculty committees, advise students and carry the responsibilities of faculty governance.” 

The cons of keeping SAS include the lack of diversity, the long-term impact on university funds, and the fact that SAS is not necessarily fair to all departments. Since the turnover of tenured faculty is incredibly slow, there are few opportunities to hire new tenure-track faculty. This does not always allow for new ideas to prosper or for new perspectives to enter Reed, where diversity is highly advertised. The departments that are not staffed against sabbatical have more of an opportunity to inject new perspectives into their curriculum, but this brings into question how not all departments being staffed against sabbatical can impact them. 

For larger departments, not being SAS might not be such a big deal since the load of classes and searches can be divided among many people, but for smaller departments where there might only be four or five faculty members, the long-term faculty would have to bear the burden of teaching 30% of the courses. Scheible commented on this issue, saying “Being staffed against sabbatical miraculously stabilizes our FTE [full-time employee] situation [and] necessarily puts students first. I think we need to put student experience first (we are, after all, a college for student education). Small departments are disproportionately impacted by our current, and it seems future, reliance on contingent faculty. In Religion, only a few years ago we were ‘staffed against sabbatical’ with five faculty members. But now we have two visiting professors, two tenured faculty members who know they will be teaching here beyond next year, and I have a sinking feeling that I will be running search after search for visiting professors for the foreseeable future (which distracts me from my own research and from the real work I do here with students - it is not a sustainable future). Even though our visiting professors have been awesome teachers and colleagues, our practice of overreliance on visiting professors makes it very difficult to build coherent curricular trajectories for our students, and to assure students that we are in fact putting their education, rather than the college budget, first. Stability matters! It matters when there are fewer hands to do the service work of the institution, from committee work to advising students with a firm sense of our idiosyncrasies and procedures. It matters for a sense of commitment and community. And it matters to the faculty who serve as visiting professors (I was one at my former institution; I know of the deep insecurity of which I speak). I am troubled -- as is the American Association of University Professors -- by what I think are shady ethics at play when there is overreliance on visiting professors.” 

The last con of SAS is that, although searching and hiring visiting professors is time-consuming and costly, two SAS positions equal three visiting positions. This means that tenured professors are, in the long run, more expensive than visiting faculty. Applewhite says, “The problem with SAS positions is twofold. One, the SAS position (money-wise) is more expensive on average than hiring a visitor. Two, when someone leaves the department (since SAS is given to a department and not a person) replacing them gets to be a little tricky. In years past, when Reed was actively trying to grow, this second issue was not a big deal. However, we are ‘FTE neutral’ right now (in this case, a faculty position). That means the number of tenure-track faculty members is held steady. If the Biology department wants to add a new position, we must wait for a retirement or departure from the college. Here's where things get really confusing. There is not a one-to-one exchange with faculty positions. When a department loses an SAS position, they lose 1/3 of an FTE. Three SAS positions equals nearly one FTE. So that's why this math matters. Since the exchange rate is not one-to-one, the math starts to get messy, and since departments are SAS and not people, we get into some gray areas really quickly. To further complicate things we can convert SAS positions into Visitors positions (I believe one SAS can be converted into three visiting positions, but I could be wrong about that math).” 

There is much to consider for CAPP, the faculty, and the student body regarding SAS. Unfortunately, the needs of everyone cannot be met, but CAPP and the Dean of Faculty must think about what is best for the student body. Should Reed prioritize the funds and diversity that they advertise to improve the student body’s education? Should they prioritize the stability of the faculty which proves to be more beneficial to students in the long run? Or is there a better solution that we are just not seeing?