What is expected of a sabbatical host?

[doc700]

I was contacted by another faculty about doing a 1 semester - 1 year visit to my lab in 2023-4.  This is a tenured professor at another university.  I am untenured faculty member at an R1 about half way through my tenure clock. I have an experimental research lab. I know this person a bit from conferences and we do have potentially complementary research expertise.

What is expected of a sabbatical host?  I am expected to pay this person's salary?  Am I expected to provide a (private?) office?  Would this person come and do research themselves in my group (sort of like another postdoc) or would they expect to have some of my students essentially working for them on a collaborative project during the stay? 

The area of research overlap is an area I would be potentially interested in expanding to study. I feel a bit unqualified to be a host as I don't have tenure myself and am still trying to get my own research portfolio established.  Is this something good for me to do?  Or neutral?  Or am expected to provide a lot of resources with little in return?  I don't know what is expected on my end and whether this is a beneficial thing to do or something I should not do while trying to get tenure myself.  I know that I should have a direct conversation with the other professor about their expectations but was hoping to understand what is "typical" first.

Thanks!

[mamselle]

It will vary from school to school, region to region, etc, but as an EA supporting a faculty member who hosted people on collaborative research sabbaticals (R1), which was just for one person when I worked with them, I assisted in:

a) Locating rental housing pre-arrival. This guest was bringing his family (wife and two elementary-age kids); I found a small rental house in a decent school district not too far from the campus. The school paid their rent as part of the research collaboration package (grant funded).

   If it had been a single individual, the school might have allocated campus housing, which they also maintained, but this was different.

b) They figured out their own transportation: I think they leased a car for the year. The school and shops were within walking distance.

c) I processed the monthly stipend payments out of the grant funding and did the rental payments (we did six months at a time to cut down on the number of checks to be cut).

d) There were meetings with others in the area who were contributors to the project. I sometimes helped set up those meetings, or where they were involved with paper presentations, I booked catering and rooms and A/V support. They might have attended one conference together but it was in town; if it had been out-of-town, I'd have done the necessary bookings for that.

e) They were on their own for most weekend stuff, but I think my boss and his wife had them over the first weekend evening with a few friends (again, research-related) and grad students working on that topic, just as a meet-and-greet.

However--in this person's case, it turned into a bit of a hairball, because it turned out their wife had never wanted to come, saw the US as a malevolent space (and this was in the 1990s, before our current nonsense!), and she spiraled into a depression, which took up a lot of her spouse's time in finding emergency care for her, childcare while she was hospitalized (here), etc. (I wasn't asked to help with that--there was a local association of nationals from their country who stepped in, but minus other help, I could have been tapped to find some).

That's more drama than might be expected, but my boss was particularly humane and didn't believe in just cutting people loose--he'd been hosted in this person's country for a sabbatical earlier, and felt the need to be as helpful as possible. They ended up cutting the trip short so the wife and kids could go home, and the husband stayed on long enough to make the basic contributions needed and then left as well.

Just saying--it could all go fine, but if you're not tenured (my boss was) and things become difficult, it's a lot to deal with.

And, of course, other situations might be much simpler.

M.

[doc700]

Yikes!  A lot to consider.  I hadn't even considered if they have a family to bring and housing etc.  I do live in a fairly urban area with plenty of rentals and people coming and going.  If there is funding finding housing wouldn't be impossible near us, even for a semester. But coordinating logistics for a family would obviously add a lot, particularly as I don't have my own children or experience with the local schools.

May I clarify -- what grant was this?  Was this a joint grant they had prior to sabbatical?  Or was this the host PI's grant and they were funding this trip?  I am somewhat afloat funding my own grad students/postdocs but don't have excess funds to support a full-time senior person for a semester.  Hypothetically we could write a joint grant this fall that could possibly get funded but the probability would likely be low for that.  I would have money to fund supplies for a project in my group but that would be about it.

[hazelshade]

OP, the situation mamselle describes above doesn't seem to have a lot to do with your situation. If someone's contacting you about hosting them in your lab, it would not be the norm for you to pay their salary, furnish housing, etc. Things that are common, in my experience:

• Provide office/bench space (not necessarily a private office, but that would likely be preferable)
• Line up some sort of affiliation that gets them access to the network, buildings, other institutional resources
• Funds for supplies for a project with your group (as you mention)
• Provide assistance with locating housing (as in, send them some resources--you don't have to play realtor here)
• Do a certain amount of social hosting/introducing them to other folks in the department/institution.

There may be some circumstances under which you could get grant funding to support them, which would allow you to offer more (e.g. if you already have NSF funding and they're at a primarily undergraduate institution, you could apply for an ROA supplement, which are pretty speedy), but that is certainly not a standard expectation.

[mamselle]

It was an NSF grant that was on its fourth or fifth 5-year run with several global locations doing coordinated research, one of them in the country of the visiting scholar, hence the need to coordinate with them.

As I said, things can vary widely. This was just an outlier scenario, but all kinds of vantage points can offer parallax on a situation.

M.

[Hibush]

I would expect them to be getting sabbatical salary from their home institution. They may have a grant the covers some of the operating costs.

Some of the most valuable things you can offer is the space to think and talk about research ideas. That is refreshing for someone who is escaping a lot of committees and service distractions, and not teaching any classes. Since you are pre-tenure, you still get to spend more time on that good stuff and hence may have a great sabbatical environment to offer.

Definitely talk about how to cover the costs of research. There may be a lot of good options. Avoid misunderstanings about it.

Lasting research relationships are a good benefit of a sabbatical. Older faculty need to think about building relationships with those ten or so years after so that they are not stuck with their own cohort as the active researchers thin out.

[Ruralguy]

This can vary widely. i was a visitor at a national lab on an R1 campus for one of my sabbaticals. They offered either housing or small stipend exactly equal to the lowest rents in that area at the time. i lived 75 miles away, so i accepted the bucks, and commuted in. i got an office. It was a taucus group that didnt mind telling you that your ideas were crap, which they more or less did, but pther thsn that, theybwere fine! got two publications put of it. would have been more if we had liked each other more.

[fizzycist]

I would tend to have the same instinct as OP in that this is a bit of an un-needed burden for pre-tenure faculty. If you are a very social person who likes to have somebody nearby to talk to, go for coffee, lunch, etc. every day, then it could be a worthwhile tradeoff. But if it were me  I would probably persuade them to make it a shorter visit (like 2 weeks) or else push it to their next sabbatical.

There is a chance the person wants to go to your location specifically (eg close family is located there? A company or national lab that they hope to also collaborate with?) and is sort of looking for an excuse to justify it. That might be a lower burden visit.

Either way, there is a ton of flexibility to structure these, so best to just have an honest conversation about each other's needs.

[Vkw10]

Tell them you'd like to schedule time to discuss what they're interested in doing with sabbatical. It may be low key.

I hosted a sabbatical once where my guest's goal was faster access to my university's  computing center. Guest had grant funding to pay for computing time, but center had a long wait list. Only way to move up the list was to be doing collaborative research with one of my university's graduate students. One of my doctoral students collaborated on research project, allowing my guest to get computing time at beginning of sabbatical. Guest got seven papers out (three solo, four collaborative), more than Guest would have accomplished in original computing center time slot. I did a bit of paperwork, begged office space, and hosted a couple of lunches to introduce Guest to people. Guest had several options for computing needs, but my university was in commuting distance of Guest's family, so Guest had free housing.

[Katrina Gulliver]

You're all overthinking this, at this stage.

doc700: Find out what the potential guest actually wants or needs. It may be that s/he needs to show an invitation from another institution to be GRANTED a paid sabbatical. This is the kind of thing you should kick up to your Dept Chair, as I'm sure they have experience and standard processes for hosting a visiting scholar.