This article is the first in a two part series examining professors who take research leaves. The first installment will examine the faculty and administration viewpoint on the phenomenon; the second part will take a look at the effect the leaves place on students.
At Tufts, it isn't uncommon for students to pick up an assigned article or book and find the name of their very professor printed across the cover.
These printed works are often the product of months of independent research by faculty - a practice that the administration says is helping build a better reputation for Tufts and drawing top faculty members to the university.
"Almost all of our peers offer research leaves," Dean of Undergraduate Education James Glaser said. "If we want to bring the best faculty in, people who are great teachers and great scholars, or who have the potential to be both, we want to offer them the opportunity to be successful. Research leaves are a part of that."
Research leaves, which must be approved by a professor's department chair and the dean of his or her school, also help faculty members stay thoroughly up-to-date in their fields, according to Glaser, who is also a professor in the Department of Political Science. He said this can improve the quality of teaching.
"We are better teachers if we are actively engaged in the creation of knowledge. It keeps our teaching fresher, and it fuses it with our own experiences," he said. "I think you'll find that there is a strong correlation between research-active departments and excellent teaching departments."
During the school year, most professors find it futile to attempt to complete thorough research in their field while teaching.
"Research requires focus. When you do 3,000 things at one time, you can't really think clearly about anything," Associate Professor of Chemistry Elena Rybak-Akimova said. "If we are trying to teach, do research and serve on 300 committees, we end up doing nothing well."
Rybak-Akimova, a tenure-stream faculty member, took a grant-funded sabbatical leave in the spring semester of 2005 to further her research in small molecule activation at a Harvard University laboratory. The $400,000 grant allowed Rybak-Akimova to conduct research and to purchase equipment for the chemistry department.
"I saw an entirely different lab culture and entirely different approach to doing science," Rybak-Akimova said. "The problems that they are working on are different to the problems we are working on, so it was extremely helpful to me."
From the perspective of Professor Hosea Hirata, who teaches Japanese and chairs the Department of German, Russian and Asian Languages and Literatures, the full duties of a professor include research endeavors.
"I think from a student's way of thinking, we are primarily teachers. But our position is really scholars," Hirata said. "We try to maintain our scholarship and be productive in that, and then hopefully that will seep into the teaching aspect. It is important to be a top-notch scholar, and to be taught by top-notch scholars."
Hirata, who plans on taking a sabbatical leave in the fall of 2009 in order to focus on writing his third book, said that despite the importance of time for research, he will miss the advantages of being on campus. For him, a balance must be achieved.
"If you don't research, you become deadwood intellectually," Hirata said. "After a while, though, you start missing the interaction with students," Hirata said. "Writing a book is a lonely task, and it takes a lot of self-discipline."
According to Glaser, one-year research leaves are now granted to junior faculty members. This change has allowed many professors to spend time creating scholarship and establishing a reputation for themselves.
Assistant Professor of Biology Mitch McVey is one junior faculty member who plans to take time off from teaching.
McVey hopes to spend the spring semester of 2009 in a Harvard laboratory, where he will learn about the techniques used to develop a new research system so that he can study how DNA is repaired when it is broken.
"Research is notorious for taking lots of time, and the fact that junior faculty members now have a year to take research leave when they are untenured means that research can be much more ambitious," McVey said.
McVey used one semester of his research leave last fall, during which he did biology research. Viewing his time away as a reenergizing period, McVey said that he was able to incorporate the knowledge he acquired through his research in to his course on molecular biology.
"In the fall, I was able to take a trip to Texas and meet with my collaborators there, and we talked about what is going on in research," McVey said. "What I teach in 'Molecular Biology' is very much in my field, so I was able to take what I learned and bring it into the classroom to show which areas are undergoing intensive research."
McVey and Rybak-Akimova both conduct research with the aide of select undergraduates and graduate students, a practice that many students engage in to maximize their experience at Tufts.
"I have a group of graduate post-doctorate and undergraduate students working on research with me," Rybak-Akimova said. "Usually, these are students who are running experiments, but they need help discussing their results."
Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences Robert Sternberg also said that a faculty member's research leave can be beneficial to students involved in research because they will have more one-on-one time with faculty members.
"Students collaborate with faculty in research, which can become an important part of their education," Sternberg said in an e-mail. "Such collaborations are enhanced by faculty's being able to have the time to develop their research programs."
