I. Purpose
Sabbatical leave is granted for the express purpose of providing an opportunity for faculty members to enhance their professional development as educators through projects of research, writing, artistic production, and/or other professional activity. The leave will promote research in one’s academic discipline.
II. Eligibility
Faculty members who have attained the rank of Associate Professor or above are eligible to apply for their first sabbatical leave after 12 semesters of teaching at Stonehill College. Full-time faculty members holding long-standing term appointments may also be considered for sabbatical upon the approval of the Vice President for Academic Affairs (VPAA), which must be obtained before the sabbatical application is submitted to the Professional Development Committee (PDC). A letter of approval from the VPAA must be submitted in writing. A faculty member will be eligible for future sabbaticals after every 12 semesters and should apply after ten semesters for the next year of eligibility. Since the College wishes to promote scholarship among its faculty, the College may include as part of the 12, semesters in which the College’s President and VPAA have granted the faculty member leave for academic pursuits. The appropriate Dean, in consultation with the VPAA, negotiate such arrangements on a case-by-case basis.
A sabbatical leave is granted consistent with the emphasis the College places on its teaching mission. In order to meet the teaching or administrative needs of the College, it may be necessary to delay or advance a specific faculty member’s sabbatical leave. Consultation between the VPAA, the appropriate Dean, and the relevant department chair will determine this criterion. Such a determination will not negatively affect the candidate’s ongoing schedule of eligibility.
Faculty members who accept the benefit of a sabbatical leave are expected to return for full-time employment at Stonehill College for a minimum of one full academic year (i.e., 9 months) following completion of the sabbatical. Agreements to the contrary must be negotiated and approved prior to participation. In those instances in which the faculty member neither returned to college duties for at least one year nor had a written agreement to the contrary, the faculty member may be required to return the salary paid during the sabbatical to the College.
Professors of Practice are eligible for sabbaticals focused on pedagogical issues, consisting of one semester with a reduced teaching load of two courses every sixteen semesters.
III. Process
Applications must be submitted using the Sabbatical Leave Form that is available in the Applications for Internal Faculty Grants & Funding Sources section of the Academic Affairs myHill site by 4:30 p.m. on the second Friday of October of the year prior to that in which the faculty member intends to take a Sabbatical Leave.
The application must include:
(a) a sabbatical proposal that follows the official format (see Section IV),
(b) a statement from the department chairperson that specifically addresses the following:
i. The impact of the Sabbatical on the teaching needs of the department or program and outlining how the applicant’s teaching load will be covered, and,
ii. The soundness of the Sabbatical proposal and the degree to which it aligns with the applicant’s ongoing research agenda.
Statement (b) should be brief and the chairperson must send it to the applicant one full week before the application deadline, and the applicant will include it in the application submission. In extraordinary circumstances, the applicant has the option to ask their Dean to write a statement on the soundness of the sabbatical proposal and how it aligns with the applicants ongoing research agenda. If the applicant is a department chairperson, the statement about the soundness of the proposal must be written by the Dean of the appropriate school in consultation with other members of the department.
Sabbatical applications are evaluated by the PDC, which makes recommendations to the VPAA. The VPAA sets a meeting with the chair of the PDC to discuss the Committee’s rationale for the recommendations. The VPAA then forwards the applications, with their recommendations, to the President for final approval. Applicants will be notified of the outcome of this process by the VPAA, normally by January 1. Within ten (10) business days of this notification, the VPAA will provide the PDC with (a) copies of the applicants’ decision letters and (b) a written explanation for any decision that deviates from the Committee’s recommendation.
IV. Application
All materials must be included in the applicant’s packet and submitted by the applicant no later than the stated deadline. Late or incomplete applications will not be considered or approved, respectively. It is the applicant’s responsibility to ensure that a complete application is submitted.
- Preliminary Information:
• Name
• Rank
• Department
• Current Position at Stonehill College (e.g., department chairperson, program director, etc.)
• Discipline/Specialization
• Date of last sabbatical if applicable
• Include Sabbatical Completion Report from your last sabbatical (if applicable)
• Up-to-date curriculum vitae - Sabbatical Project:
• Brief descriptive title of your proposal, clearly indicating whether it will involve research, writing, artistic production, and/or professional activity.
• Specific time period of sabbatical (i.e., fall or spring semester, entire academic year or entire calendar year)
• If travel is required, where and when you will conduct research or other professional activity.
• If your proposed project involves human subjects, please indicate this, as well as whether or not you have received IRB approval. All grant projects involving research with human subjects must receive IRB approval before the grant period begins. - Proposal:
Your description should make the project clear to an interdisciplinary academic panel of peers on the Professional Development Committee. It is recognized that project descriptions will vary according to the author’s discipline or professional background; however, the following basic elements below must be incorporated into the text:
• An analysis of the problem to be addressed, its background, and its significance to the field, which may include:
o the basic ideas and hypotheses to be explored
o reference to the originality of the proposed study through a brief statement that locates it within the current literature of the field
o the methods or approaches to be used;
• The body of research materials that will be drawn upon in archives, libraries, and research centers, laboratories, or the equivalent, depending on the field of specialization;
• A specific work plan that indicates what will actually be done during the period of funding;
• An indication of how the project’s results will be disseminated to augment your abilities as a classroom educator and/or promote research; and,
• An explanation of how the project will directly strengthen your teaching, research, and/or artistic production.
V. Evaluation
In awarding a sabbatical leave, the following criteria must be met:
• Clear evidence that the applicant’s project will promote research in one’s discipline, as defined in section VI, point 2.
• Demonstration of scholarly publication or similar results from previous sabbatical leaves through submission of Sabbatical Completion Report(s) (as applicable). See section VII.
• A record of publications of refereed books, articles or artistic creations as demonstrated on the CV, which reveals active and recent scholarship in the applicant’s field. However, this does not preclude the awarding of sabbaticals to faculty who, for whatever reasons, have not had a significant publication record, but can demonstrate a plan for beginning or reinvigorating their scholarly efforts and outcomes.
VI. Guidelines and Restrictions
The following guidelines and restrictions are placed on Sabbatical Leaves:
- Ordinarily, teaching or other employment of a non-research nature is not permitted during a sabbatical. Exceptions to this policy must be approved in advance by the VPAA.
- Sabbatical leave applications include such research, writing, artistic production, and/or other professional activities that:
• Advance knowledge through original and/or creative research
• Integrate or synthesize knowledge (e.g., create textbooks, edited anthologies or volumes; conduct interdisciplinary research; educate non-specialists within and outside the College; review the work of others; and develop technology to assist faculty in their work)
• Apply knowledge (e.g., public programming, collaboration with other institutions and groups, design and lead workshops and seminars)
• Transform knowledge through pedagogical and curricular development (e.g., develop museum catalogues and exhibits, film and radio presentations; research and write in order to improve teaching at the college or K-12 levels, develop assessment tools, educate faculty peers in web-based or other instructional technologies). - It is recognized that in some disciplines there are several steps and much time necessary for data collection, analysis and ultimately publication. Thus, while some sabbatical leave projects will not end with a final product, applicants must nonetheless provide a detailed Sabbatical Leave Completion Report, as outlined in section VII, point 1.
- Faculty members have the right to appeal decisions pertinent to sabbatical leaves to the Faculty Grievance Committee.
- The Office of Academic Affairs will publish a list of faculty members approved for a sabbatical leave as well as a description of their successful sabbatical leave proposals.
VII. Reporting Sabbatical Results
Within three months of returning to full-time teaching, a faculty member granted sabbatical will submit to the VPAA, their Dean, and the respective department chair a 1-2 page Sabbatical Leave Completion Report. This summarizes (1) completed work and, if applicable, (2) future plans to finalize the project through publication, artistic exhibition, or similar, depending on one’s discipline. Reports will be made available to any faculty member upon request.
Within the academic year following sabbatical, a faculty member will communicate the results of their sabbatical activities to the academic community by way of a seminar, printed summary, intranet discussion group, or any other forum open to the college community.
VIII. Benefits
During a sabbatical leave, a faculty member shall continue to enjoy all normal employee benefits.
A sabbatical leave, if granted, provides full salary for one semester, or half salary for two consecutive semesters. N.B.: A faculty member’s eligibility to receive standard faculty benefits during a sabbatical is contingent upon the receipt of a salary, e.g., a faculty member who takes a sabbatical lasting two semesters will receive half salary paid over the entire year and will remain eligible for all standard faculty benefits. Whereas, a faculty member who takes a two-semester sabbatical and opts to receive their full salary during the first semester and takes an unpaid leave of absence during the second semester will be ineligible to receive the standard faculty benefits during the second semester. Faculty members may make efforts to secure outside funding for their sabbaticals. If the faculty member is successful in obtaining a grant or fellowship, that funding may be used to extend a paid sabbatical for one year. Faculty members who are on full salary sabbatical leave may not engage in salaried employment in this country or elsewhere, however desirable the experience, during the time covered by the sabbatical. This does not preclude acceptance of scholarships, fellowships, or grants for the purpose of research and study for which no services are required, or Fulbright lectureships when teaching is combined with research. A faculty member on a half- or three-quarters salary sabbatical leave may, with the prior approval of the VPAA, accept outside remuneration for work directly relevant to his or her teaching, research, creative or professional activity, or service.