According to Wikipedia, a “sabbatical (from Latin: sabbaticus, from Greek : sabbatikos, from Hebrew: shabbat [i.e., Sabbath ], literally a "ceasing") is a rest from work, or a break, often lasting from two months to a year.” However, College at Brockport policy states that the objective of a sabbatical leave is not to provide faculty with a “rest from work,” but to “increase the value of faculty to SUNY through planned travel, study, formal education, research, writing, and/or other experience of professional value.” My 2017-2018 sabbatical is my third since I was hired by the College at Brockport in 1993—but my first year-long one. Did my first two sabbaticals increase my “value” to SUNY? Hard to say; it depends upon the currency [Euros? US$? Yuan?] used in the sabbatical cost-benefit analysis. I spent my first sabbatical studying Richard’s pipits in the Snowy Mountains of Australia, and working with the Applied Ecology Research group at the University of Canberra. These projects led to a peer-reviewed paper on the breeding biology of Richard’s (now Australasian) pipits, a long-term scientific collaboration with Ken Green, an Australian alpine ecologist, and some ideas about teaching that I later integrated into my Field Biology class. During my second sabbatical I traveled to the Death Valley area, where I worked with rare and endangered desert fishes and amphibians. Four years later, I published a book of creative nonfiction focused on these species, Relicts of a Beautiful Sea. The experiences and ideas that are central to the book (and those that have grown out of it) have influenced the way in which I see the natural world, what I teach, and my current research and creative writing activities. Interest in Relicts led to speaking engagements throughout the country, contacts with some wonderful and interesting people, and further research on the Inyo Mountains salamander—a magical creature and one of only two desert salamanders in the world. So: Academic sabbaticals are not (and should not be) “a rest from work”; instead, they are a mechanism by which faculty can focus on aspects of their job that too often are neglected—especially their scholarship and creative activities. The opportunity to do something different, and focus on what I love, is one of the greatest perks of my profession. It also is a rare privilege in the American workplace, where many (most?) people have only limited opportunities to diversify, and spend time doing something other than what’s required by their narrowly circumscribed job duties. I'll begin my 2017-2018 sabbatical with a three-week stint as a writer-in-residence at Great Basin National Park in Nevada, a montane island rising from cool desert sagebrush sea. While there I will be thinking and writing about the nature of islands, both in their ecological and metaphorical contexts. From Great Basin National Park I will move on to eastern California, to begin my US Fish and Wildlife Service-funded research project on the Inyo Mountains slender salamander. I plan to be back in Brockport for a winter of writing (Perhaps imagined as a reverse migration?), before returning to the California desert in the spring, to finish up the salamander project. And then? Maybe a stint at the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center, or research in the Northwest Territories of Canada, before returning to Brockport for the 2018-2019 academic year. Perhaps then I will be prepared to talk about the “value” of my sabbatical—to the College at Brockport, myself, my department, and my students. In the meantime I will give thanks for this great privilege, and hope to have some fun.
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AuthorI am a professor emeritus of Environmental Science and Ecology at SUNY Brockport. What began in 2017 as a sabbatical blog continues in a haphazard way, as the spirt moves me and time allows. The focus, though, remains the same - the natural world, in all of its complexity and beauty, and our relation to it. Archives
November 2023
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