The faculty endorsed an improved sabbatical policy at its meeting Tuesday, but the new policy isn't as expansive as some professors hoped because, as President Ruth Simmons said later in the meeting, the University's financial situation is already "pushing the edge of the envelope."
Efforts to reject endorsing the sabbatical policy in favor of a more equitable one failed by a vote of 51-11 after it became clear that the University is not financially prepared to fund an expanded policy that also covers non-tenured faculty.
The policy endorsed yesterday - which brings Brown on par with the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia, Duke, New York and Cornell universities - will go into effect following Corporation approval.
The endorsed policy - discussed among faculty in recent months as Option A - provides tenured faculty with the opportunity to go on sabbatical with 75 percent of their normal salary after every six semesters of teaching. As part of this new system, professors also have the choice of taking a semester-long sabbatical at full pay after 12 semesters, or a yearlong leave at 75 percent pay.
In addition, when a department loses a professor to a sabbatical, the department can expect to receive $10,000 in automatic funding to hire replacement instructors. Extra funding can be granted as the need arises, said Associate Professor of History Robert Self, vice chair of the Faculty Affairs Committee, at the meeting. The departmental funding is designed to alleviate pressure on the curriculum that might come with more faculty members spending time off-campus.
The current policy allows faculty to take a semester-long sabbatical at full pay after 12 semesters of teaching or a year-long leave at half pay, according to a September 2005 letter from Dean of the Faculty Rajiv Vohra P'07 to professors.
In Tuesday's discussion of the new policy, faculty members again voiced concerns about the policy's fairness to senior lecturers and research faculty, who do not stand to benefit from the new system even though a portion of their pay goes into a fund supporting sabbaticals. Their objections - brought up in at least two other faculty meetings - centered on the policy's focus on tenured faculty.
Existing University policy is not to grant senior lecturers sabbaticals, though several professors and administrators acknowledged that it often happens anyway because lecturers' experience and research expectations vary across departments. Some professors said explicitly excluding senior lecturers from the new policy is unfair and disregards the realities of their role at Brown.
"This will have a destructive impact in terms of morale if we widen the breach between tenured and non-tenured faculty," one professor said at the meeting. "It's an undue slap in the face to these people."
It became apparent as the meeting progressed that at least part of the reason for excluding non-tenured faculty is financial in nature.
"This is what is - at the moment - financially feasible," Self told the faculty. "But the FAC will continue to work with the administration on this issue." Faculty Executive Committee Chair Ann Dill, associate professor of sociology, also vowed the committees involved would continue discussing policies for non-tenured faculty.
"Enlarging the number of people away from teaching changes a lot of financial calculations, and we don't want to do that on-the-fly," one professor said.
Self added that he thinks the best solution is to get Corporation approval now for the principle of one semester's sabbatical every six semesters and then work over time to fine-tune the other components. University officials have long had the goal of providing faculty full pay - rather than 75 percent pay - for those on sabbatical.
But not all were swayed by financial considerations. Citing improvements in graduate student stipends, faculty size and financial aid that once seemed unfeasible, Associate Professor of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies Luiz Valente spoke passionately about avoiding complacency.
"With all due respect, I thought we got rid of this 'no at Brown' mentality on July 2, 2001, when President Ruth Simmons took the oath of office," said Valente, a former FAC and FEC chair. "I'm a little troubled by the mentality that we should take this policy today because it's the best we think we can get."
But what Brown can get may be severely limited over the next few years, according to Simmons' general remarks to faculty. Simmons said the University's spending has increased rapidly to fulfill priorities in the Plan for Academic Enrichment, adding that Corporation members challenged University officials in May 2006 to become more ambitious about their goals than in the past.
Simmons said future University budgets will entail "a fair degree of risk," alluding to additional debt being taken on to finance spending priorities.
"We're reaching the point in our financial plan where we'll have less and less flexibility, but we are pushing the edge of the envelope," Simmons said. "Within a couple of years, we will be at the point where we can't stretch this just too much more."
Simmons said, with regard to faculty leave policy, the University simply doesn't have the financial or human resources to support policies like those at Harvard and Yale universities.
"We have to push as fast as we can, though there are limits on that," she said. "We just have to keep seeing how far we can push those limits."
The faculty also unanimously approved - and applauded - the creation of a five-year, dual degree program with Brown and the Rhode Island School of Design.
The program, which will award students a bachelor of arts or bachelor of science degree from Brown and a bachelor of fine arts degree from the RISD, will annually admit approximately 20 students, who have to be accepted to both schools before applying for the joint program. Students will pay Brown-level tuition, which will be split between the University and RISD. The program is expected to accept its first students in 2008.
