4.3 Project sabbaticals

Like everything else in the academic cycle, projects can become a treadmill. Projects usually consume more than a term or semester (often well over half the academic year), and in most departments "there is no escape". It is important for staff to be able to get some relief from this treadmill.

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This bundle proposes periodic relief from some or all supervisory duties. The benefits for the staff are in an opportunity to recharge batteries, and for students in consequent renewed enthusiasm.

The way it works is for the department's workload allocation to recognise project supervision very explicitly and permit buyout from all or part of it. The precise "price" that might be paid is a matter for local definition, but obvious options are: responsibility for all or part of some other teaching, or a suitable administrative task. It is not necessary for all supervision to be excused - a half-load can have a surprising rejuvenating effect on supervisors who have been responsible for, say, 6 projects a year for a decade.

It is not necessary for this to be part of a larger sabbatical arrangement; it is more in the way of a local rearrangement of duties.

It only works (obviously) if the department's managerial hierarchy are persuaded of the merits of the idea, and are prepared to see appropriate rearrangements of duties.

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So: provide mechanisms to give people a temporary break – they will come back to the task better motivated and with more energy.