Faculty Senate

Committee Annual Report

Committee: Sabbatical Committee

Chair: Uwe Kaiser

Liaison: Joie Burns

Report Date: April 22, 2014

Accomplishments: The committee reviewed 32 applications for sabbatical leave for the 2014-
2015 academic year which is a slight decrease in comparison to the previous year. The break
down in the table below shows there was an even distribution among the applications for the full
academic year and the spring/fall semesters combined. The table also shows the colleges from
which the applications originated in each category. 31 of the applications were eventually
recommended to the Provost for approval.

#Applications AY 2015-2015 FA 2014 SP 2015

COAS 13 3 6 4
COBE 2 1 1 0
COED 6 2 2 2
COEN 5 5 0 0
COHS 0 0 0 0
SSPA 6 4 1 1
TOTAL 32 15 9 7

The committee met once during the fall 2013 semester. A second planned meeting discussing
the lecturer sabbatical policy was canceled after the committee decided that there was no clear
mandate from the side of the faculty senate at this point, a letter from chairs was circulated
raising questions about this, and it was not obvious for the committee at all that the Sabbatical
committee (at least in its present form) would be the committee handling sabbatical applications
for lecturers. The committee met twice in the spring 2014 semester to review applications. The
committee discussed improvements of the Application for Sabbatical Leave form that will be
implemented in the next round of sabbatical applications.

Recommendations for Senate Action: If the faculty senate wants the sabbatical committee to
review the lecturer sabbatical policy then a clear mandate of what the expectations and purpose
are would be helpful. In particular: If the sabbatical committee is the committee to recommend
lecturer sabbaticals then it seems reasonable to merge the lecturer policy with Policy#4400 and
a lecturer representative should be member of the committee. Otherwise, an independent
lecturer sabbatical committee could be formed to decide on lecturer sabbaticals. But this
decision does not seem to lie within the scope of decisions made by the sabbatical committee
itself.
Unfinished Business: There are still several points in the language of Policy #4400 that could
be improved to avoid areas that were misunderstood by some applicants and not consistent
with the committees expectations. In particular, the committee has been discussing ways to
state in a clearer way the eligibility criteria A 2. and 3. of Policy #4400. Those points need to be
addressed by the Sabbatical Committee next year before the application process begins.