Sabbatical report, 2025–2026 (#1414)

Topics/tags: Autobiographical

Every seven years or so, Grinnell faculty members get a sabbatical [1], a year away from class and service responsibilities to focus on research, course development, or other aspects of their professional lives. Sabbaticals are one of the amazing benefits of being in academia and help offset the lower pay most academicians receive than those in industry [2]. At the end of each sabbatical, we are supposed to present the Dean with a report on our sabbatical activities. Here’s mine for this past year.

Dear Ruth [3,4] and Caleb [5],

This letter serves as my report on my sabbatical in academic year 2025–2026. I see from my notes that it is my first full-year sabbatical under the new sabbatical policies. (For my full-year 2019–2020 sabbatical, I had to cash in some accumulated course releases and take a pay reduction; I remain unconvinced that it was appropriate or ethical to exclude those who wanted to keep their accumulated MAP course releases from the first round of full-year sabbaticals [6].)

As seems to be the norm, at least for me, my sabbatical ended up being much different than I’d originally planned. In part, that’s because I left myself open to other opportunities, as I’d noted in my sabbatical request. In part, that’s because I’d planned to do too much, as Caleb suggested. In part, that’s because I ended my sabbatical early because I had to replace a colleague for half a semester when they went on unexpected leave.

As Ruth has suggested, I failed sabbatical in many of the choices I made. I kept my twenty or so advisees. I took summer research students in both summer 2025 and summer 2026. I supervised research students in fall 2025 and ran a large guided reading in spring 2026. I continued to attend and even participate actively in department, division, and full faculty meetings [7]. I remained on the General Science committee. I contributed to my scholarly community through reviewing papers and scholarship applications, as well as serving as both a Senior Reviewer and a Track Chair for Panels and Special Sessions for the SIGCSE Technical Symposium.

It is through my service work that my first unexpected opportunity appeared: I was asked to apply to be Senior Program Co-Chair for the SIGCSE Virtual 2026, the second ACM Virtual Global Computing Education Conference. During my sabbatical, I’ve worked with my junior co-chair, the Conference Chairs, track chairs, and our Steering Committee to recruit committee members and reviewers, develop and document policies and practices, recruit others, conduct a reviewing process that ensured that each of the 300 or so papers received at least three reviews and one meta-review, and select papers for presentation. In this work, I’ve been able to draw upon my experience as Program Co-Chair for the in-person SIGCSE 2024 and 2025 Technical Symposia [8,9]. I feel privileged to help shape a new conference that makes the SIGCSE experience open to people who cannot attend the in-person conference, especially since SIGCSE has determined that a hybrid conference is not financially tenable.

The second unexpected opportunity stemmed from the community building [10] that I regularly include in the summer research experience. Enough students who attended my weekly board game night expressed an interest in board game design that I decided to run a guided reading on that subject. When I last offered a guided reading on the topic about a decade ago, it was for only a small group of students, and it had a Technology Studies designation. This time, I opened it for all comers and ended up with eighteen students. Since Technology Studies no longer exists [11], I ended up running it under Computer Science, making a CS-related game one of the design challenges. However, in running the class, I was reminded that board game design itself shares many characteristics with areas of CS. Among other things, playtesting can be very similar to the user testing that is (or should be) done in user interface design, and rule set design is very similar to protocol design. Both also share a need to focus simultaneously on big-picture issues and small details. I hope to be able to offer it again as a special topics course [12].

My work with summer research students has been productive. The summer 2025 students and I had a paper accepted to the SIGCSE 2026 Technical Symposium (acceptance rate approximately 30%) on a novel approach to checking student understanding. The students also had two submissions accepted to the student research competition, both on issues of accessibility for neurodiverse (ND) and blind and low-vision (BLV) students [14]. The summer 2026 students are continuing this work and are submitting papers to the SIGCSE 2027 Technical Symposium. Because they are working on the interactive development environment that supports our CSC-151 course, their work should also positively affect the students taking that course this year [15].

Having to teach a course in the second half of the spring semester put an early end to my sabbatical. I generally find that teaching effort expands to occupy any unplanned time, and that was especially true as I took over a class I had not designed and that I would design differently. Helping the students adjust to a different teacher also added stress. Taking over halfway through also reminded me that teaching half the class sessions does not constitute half the labor of the class; the second half of the semester, along with getting acclimated to another approach, is much more than half of the labor [16]. I’d be happy to discuss the issues of that class more with you [17].

The sabbatical also gave me opportunities to reflect on teaching computer science in an age of generative artificial intelligence, particularly as some pundits promote GenAI as an alternative approach to programming. I remain convinced that we best serve students by teaching them the skills of computational thinking, at least in the early courses, leaving the use of AI tools to upper-level classes. I’m concerned that the casual use of the tools not only affects the way students think, but also the processes by which we check student understanding. In particular, I’ve had to rethink my use of take-home exams. Although I remain convinced that students are better served by being able to take their exams and quizzes outside of the stresses of the classroom and without time constraints, I’ve concluded that a high enough proportion of students will intentionally or unthinkingly violate guidelines that such exams are no longer feasible [18].

As Caleb and I discussed, one of my personal goals for the sabbatical year was to figure out what it meant to live without my wife, Michelle, who passed away in October 2024. I have not achieved perfect clarity, but one day at a time seems to be successful, at least for the time being. The sabbatical and the early end to the sabbatical also helped me revisit my thoughts about Senior Faculty Status. There are few things I enjoy more than teaching and its associated activities. However, this time, along with the stress of teaching the course, led me to conclude that I should move to SFS after my next sabbatical, which I believe is scheduled for 2030–2031 [19]. I expect that my SFS plans will include advising, supervising student research, and supporting the software my students and I developed.

I appreciate that Grinnell is able to offer regular full-year, full-pay sabbaticals to faculty who regularly engage in student-faculty research [20]. Although I may have failed sabbatical, I both needed and benefited from the time away from my typical teaching and committee responsibilities. Thank you to all who make such sabbaticals possible. I hope that we will also find a way to give professional staff their own opportunities to reflect and recharge for an extended period [21].

With kind regards,

Samuel A. Rebelsky

Postscript: Just in case you were wondering, the original report did not include endnotes. I added them for my ’blog audience.

Postscript: Am I bitter in this report? Or am I perhaps more bitter than I should be? After all, sabbatical is a wonderful opportunity. What did I complain about? Not too much. Issues from the early days of the new sabbatical policy. Having to end my sabbatical early. Compensation (or lack thereof) from ending my sabbatical early. Our failure to give sabbatical-like opportunities to staff. Also generative AI. Yeah, that seems reasonable. And I was positive about some issues, or at least I think I was.

[1] Since we can delay our sabbaticals, and sometimes even accelerate them, it’s not always every seven years.

[2] Unfortunately, non-faculty and faculty not in regular positions don’t normally get sabbaticals.

[3] Ruth is Ruth Feingold, the Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the College. At many schools, she’d have the title Provost.

[4] Should I address my Dean as Dean Feingold? Probably. However, Grinnell is an informal place.

[5] Caleb is Caleb Elfenbein, an Associate Dean. Caleb is responsible for faculty leaves.

[6] Can you tell that I’m still bitter about it? If you want to hang on to the course releases you earned by doing full-time summer research with students, you don’t get the same benefit that almost every other faculty member gets still seems inappropriate, especially as it was intended to accompany an increase in student-faculty research. Still, I need to learn to get over such things.

[7] It seemed important to hear what was going on, particularly with a new dean in place. And the last time I took a leave, enough strange things happened that I felt a bit blindsided.

[8] Brag, brag.

[9] Among other things, I have access to all the different sets of instructions and email templates from SIGCSE TS. The first SIGCSE Virtual was done so speedily that materials weren’t necessarily kept.

[10] People keep telling me that community building is one of my strengths. That seems to be a good thing.

[11] Technology Studies was discontinued to support the development of two other concentrations: (a) Science, Technology, and Medicine, and (b) Digital Studies. I don’t think board game design fits as naturally in either as it fit in Tech Studies.

[12] Perhaps as early as spring 2027.

[14] I’m doing my best to ensure that accessibility remains a consideration for all the work that we do. BLV and ND students are groups that seem particularly appropriate to consider.

[15] That assumes that we’re successful in making the changes. If we’re not, I’m probably going back to DrRacket.

[16] Can you tell that that’s a dig at We pay external people $X to teach a course, so we’ll pay you $X/2 to teach half the course?

[17] No, I will not discuss them in public.

[18] I’ve written about this issue, haven’t I? I’d like to extend the time for classes just so there’s time for regular quizzes in class.

[19] Amazingly, no one is quite sure when my sabbatical should be. I delayed enough of my sabbaticals that there’s some confusion. One of my cohort (the people who started the same year as I did) took their last regular sabbatical in 2024–2025, so I think mine should also have been that year.

[20] Note to prospective faculty: This sabbatical policy is much better than most institutions.

[21] I don’t know whether or not I have any institutional capital left, but that’s an important issue to raise, particularly in this context.

Version 1.0 of 2026-06-28.