Lyssa Beyer

Picture yourself walking into a mid-grade restaurant. It’s the average sit-down chain eatery with meals usually running about 10 bucks. It’s not the best food, but the environment really fits your disposition and you enjoy it. You’re quite hungry, but you’re kind of in a hurry to get out because you have to get to work.

Now, you’ve been sitting in your booth for a while and you suddenly snap out of the trance the dim lighting and Muzak has put you in and realize it’s been a long time since you ordered.

That’s when you get the bad news. Turns out your waitress left in the middle of your order because she had more important things to do. So now you’ve not only got a grumbling tummy to deal with but no time to satisfy it.

Now, let’s talk about reality and a similar aggravation. You’re a young college student, trying to figure out the system and what it’s going to take to get out of this place in four years – once a goal that now seems a daunting task. It’s a medium-sized college, but a good one, and just as in the previous story, you’re hungry for what the school has to offer and you’re short on time.

Now comes the bad news. Your academic advisor has taken a sabbatical leave for one or possibly two semesters and you haven’t been assigned a new one. You can contact him or her via e-mail, but for the most part, you’re left to decipher the university’s tangled web of requirements on your own.

How similar are these two tales of misfortune? Too similar for comfort. And the only real difference is that your future isn’t a chopped steak and potatoes plate.

Interim Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Dean of Graduate Studies Andrew Phillips said in an e-mail that sabbatical leave is allowed by Wisconsin Law statute 36.11(17) and is known as the “professional leave program.”

A staff member must have six years of full-time instruction since their last leave and can opt for one full-paid semester, or a year’s leave in which he or she will earn 65 percent of their normal income. The remaining 35 percent is used to pay replacement staff.

In order to take a sabbatical, the professor must give a proposal on a plan that will contribute to his or her professional growth and make significant contributions to teaching, he wrote.

Phillips also wrote that the benefits of sabbaticals are that professors can conduct thorough research they couldn’t do with a full-teaching load.

They also help reduce faculty burnout over a long teaching career, create more student-research opportunities and make way for significant course revision, he wrote.

Understandable.

Some university research is a great thing. Take a look at some of the recent medical breakthroughs at the University of Minnesota. And who knows, research by UW-Eau Claire professors could lead to more recognition for our university, making it a more sought-after destination and better on resumes for all who pass through its programs.

But the concept of sabbatical leave represents the wry smile on the face of the university – the hidden business behind the promise that each and every student is guaranteed a great college experience.

As students, we are being offered an invaluable tool in our quest for the American dream by attending Eau Claire.

But romanticism aside, the university, just like anything else, is a business. And without the business of the students, this university does not exist. Students spend their hard earned money, and in many cases money they do not have, to attend this university. So why are they in some cases not treated as the paying customers that they are?

Students are fairly complacent. Most of them are from Wisconsin and Minnesota and want to stay relatively close to home. That, or Eau Claire has a program they want, and the university knows these things.

And though not every student is directly affected by sabbaticals, what about course availability? There are currently departments that have more than one staffer on leave. In those same departments, there are kids struggling to get into gateway courses that will allow them to move on in their program.

It seems only logical that if those professors spent more time doing their actual job of teaching than roaming the globe, it would be easier for the customers to get the classes they need and in turn graduate on time.

Not to mention, for a UW System that is always crying in vain for a larger budget, one would think that it wouldn’t be too keen on year-long paid vacations.

And even though the system policy supposedly requires that sabbatical leave

doesn’t cost anything extra, some students might believe otherwise.

But, who am I to complain – it is certain that for every disgruntled student who has gotten the short end of the stick there is another beaming with Blugolds pride.

And who knows, someday I may have to bite my tongue when an Eau Claire professor does something that changes the world forever and revolutionized my educational experience. – maybe.

Hanson is a sophomore print journalism major and guest columnist for The Spectator.