The sabbatical ranks high on the list of perks given to academic professionals. However, little explicit attention gets paid to the nitty-gritty of planning and executing these adventures. The faculty handbook tells you the duration of leave your institution permits, the amount of financing provided by the institution, and a few other rudimentary details. But, in much the same ad hoc way that you search for an academic position and develop your grant proposals, you're on your own to deal with your sabbatical.

Conversations with senior colleagues about their sabbaticals can prove insightful and inspiring. Therefore, I share with you some of the information I picked up in chats with academic research scientists about their sabbatical experiences.

Shifting Focus

"As I neared middle age, I thought how sad it would be to study just one narrow aspect of biology for my entire research career," mused Karen Palter, associate professor of biology at Temple University in Philadelphia. For scientists with small research groups and limited resources, the sabbatical affords a rare opportunity to start new projects.

In Palter's case, this opportunity grew out of a collaboration she had begun with carbohydrate biochemists at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. When the Hopkins group received funding to work in an area which could use Palter's expertise, they invited her to help them. Initially, she didn't view the new project as one that might be developed in her own lab. But a search of the literature turned up a knowledge gap in the field of cell surface carbohydrates, one that she could fill by applying to the problem her expertise in Drosophila genetics. "The more I talked about the research project, the more excited I became about doing it."

Now, months beyond her sabbatical and with intriguing new results in hand, Palter has shifted much of the research in her lab onto the new project. "I probably would have been too intimidated to do this on my own, having no background in carbohydrate biochemistry. But collaborating with the world's experts in carbohydrate analysis gave me the motivation and courage to do it." The best things about the sabbatical, Palter concludes, were the chance to get back into the laboratory and the opportunity to discover a whole new literature.

Learning New Skills

For Richard Finnell, now the director of the Center for Human Molecular Genetics, Munroe-Meyer Institute, University of Nebraska Medical Center at Omaha, his first sabbatical gave him the hands-on experience in molecular biology that he sorely needed for his studies in toxicogenetics. As Finnell explained, he was largely self-taught in laboratory techniques, which left him ill-equipped to carry out much of the research he wanted to do.

When time came for a sabbatical from his tenured associate professorship at Washington State University at Pullman, Finnell arranged to spend the year in James Eberwine's laboratory in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The two had met the previous year at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory summer course "Cloning of Neural Genes." Eberwine had directed the course and Finnell had been a student.

Finnell spoke of his 1990-91 sabbatical year as a career-transforming experience that helped him build a robust research program. He recalls that, at the outset, he was terrified because he felt so ignorant. "For the first month or so, I didn't even know enough to ask good questions. I had to figure out how to make buffer solutions and do other basic things like use the scary ultracentrifuge and sequence DNA." With help, but no coddling, from various members of the Eberwine lab, Finnell moved from "wanting to escape to the 'burbs on Friday nights" to hanging around the lab late in the evening to soak up all the science he could.

Finnell also used the sabbatical to scrutinize the institution he was visiting. "When you give talks at other universities," he said, "you look through a very narrow window. But when you spend many months at a place, you get to learn much more about how the institution really functions." Just as importantly, he made an effort to learn about laboratory management. "Before going to Jim's lab, I'd never been in such a large research group. Therefore, I'd never thought about how to organize the group to create the positive chemistry that's so important for the enjoyment and the productivity of the lab." The dialogue between Finnell and Eberwine about lab management and mentoring, as well as about science, still continues. The sabbatical experience spawned a professional relationship as well as a lasting friendship.

Charting New Territory in an Old, Familiar Place

Long before her sabbatical, Susan Weiss, professor of microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania, knew she wanted to spend that year at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF). Having done a fellowship there many years earlier, she saw the sabbatical as a chance to return to a city she loved and to work at a research institution filled with creative energy.

Planning the scientific component of the year meant choosing a research question that would enrich the ongoing work in her lab dealing with coronavirus. Ultimately she chose to focus on determining the crystal structure of a key viral protein. She felt that this project would take her into a research area - protein crystallography - that was largely foreign to her.

Having gotten a list of the structural biology labs at UCSF, Weiss phoned friends and colleagues to learn which lab might be the best for a sabbatical experience. The top vote went to crystallographer Robert Fletterick and his group, so Weiss contacted Fletterick, then met with him before deciding to join his lab for her sabbatical.

For Weiss, returning to work at the bench, but in a new field, was very illuminating. Her experience "in the trenches" with students and postdocs in the Fletterick lab showed her how slow-moving and frustrating protein crystallography could be. Even in a top-flight lab, "it's quite possible to waste five years on a project," she said, explaining that preparing a crystal that is good enough to study remains largely a trial and error endeavor. Similarly, she was surprised to learn that the best analysis of certain crystals sometimes required a marathon trip half way around the world. To gain access to one of three such machines, groups of students from the lab would "fly to Japan and work round-the-clock 8-hour shifts to get the data. They would return, looking very blurry eyed."

In retrospect, Weiss sees that she had proposed to do far more than could have been accomplished in one year. Nonetheless, she made headway in beginning the project, established an important professional contact, and gained insight about a scientific culture very different from her own.

Absent in Body, But Not in Spirit

A few people with whom I spoke raised concerns about the consequences of being away, noting "my lab would disintegrate in my absence" or "the new curriculum design will be terrible without my input." Fears of this sort lead faculty to stay in their own lab for the sabbatical period. However, creative planning and compromise may ward off disaster during an out-of-town sabbatical.

For example, Karen Palter intentionally chose a sabbatical locale close enough for trips home on weekends and for attending important departmental events. Also, she elected to take her half-year sabbatical during the spring rather than the fall semester, to avoid turning over a plum teaching assignment that might not come back to her upon her return.

For Susan Weiss, planning for the survival of her laboratory in her absence meant assigning day-to-day responsibilities to a senior postdoctoral fellow. Weiss didn't just delegate responsibility, she rewarded it. Before leaving for her sabbatical, she managed to get the fellow promoted to research associate and increased his salary through a supplement to her NIH grant.

The execution of her plan, which also involved frequent email communications and long, weekly phone calls, worked well. "Pedro did a great job. He really mentored students, directed lab meetings, dealt with animal protocols, and so forth." The only casualty of note was that one graduate student left the lab during Weiss's year away. She readily acknowledges the challenges a student faces during an advisor's year away.

Conclusion

If you are an academic research scientist, try to recall why you chose this profession. What about it most appealed to you? What do you miss most from your early days in the lab? What technical deficits did you never get to fill? What new areas of investigation do you wish you could study? Answers to any of those questions may help you start planning your own upcoming sabbatical. Go for it!