{"id":827531,"date":"2026-05-28T09:53:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T09:53:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/827531\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T09:53:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T09:53:17","slug":"columbia-college-chicago-pauses-faculty-sabbaticals-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/827531\/","title":{"rendered":"Columbia College Chicago Pauses Faculty Sabbaticals Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Columbia College Chicago has paused faculty sabbaticals for the second year in a row, a college spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed, confirming a report in the student newspaper, The Columbia Chronicle<\/a>, which broke the news.<\/p>\n

Interim provost Suzanne McBride announced the move at a Faculty Senate meeting last week, the Chronicle reported, citing financial challenges. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe only reason I\u2019m doing this is because I\u2019m trying to count every penny,\u201d\u00a0McBride\u00a0reportedly told the Senate. \u201cAs much as I very much value and regret that I have to do this a second year, I just have to make this decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tenured faculty who have worked full-time at the college for at least five years have historically been eligible to apply for a sabbatical in their sixth year, according to the faculty handbook<\/a>, and every six years after that. <\/p>\n

The sabbatical pause is part of a broader effort to cut costs at Columbia College, which laid off 20 full-time faculty members last year<\/a> and has since instituted a 4-3 teaching load for tenured faculty and revised its termination policy under adverse circumstances policy to require 10 business days\u2019 notice for layoffs, according to the student newspaper. \u00a0<\/p>\n

At last week\u2019s Faculty Senate meeting, Brendan Riley,\u00a0associate professor in the School of Communication and Culture\u00a0and\u00a0chair of the faculty affairs committee of the Senate, shared the results of the annual faculty survey, which showed that some respondents blamed the loss of sabbaticals for low morale. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere were a number of comments that said, \u2018I understand why we lost sabbatical but I don\u2019t like it,\u2019\u201d Riley said, adding that faculty overwhelmingly feared \u201closing support for creative endeavors and scholarly work.\u201d<\/p>\n

McBride, a journalism professor, said she empathized with faculty, citing her own \u201ctransformative\u201d sabbatical experience in 2012. <\/p>\n

\u201cAs we continue working to stabilize the college\u2019s enrollment, reduce administrative overhead, and diversify revenue, it is my sincere hope and personal goal that we will be able to reinstate the sabbatical process in the future,\u201d she said in a statement the college shared with Inside Higher Ed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Columbia College Chicago has paused faculty sabbaticals for the second year in a row, a college spokesperson told…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":827532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5124],"tags":[2563,960,407,2879,2878,5386,1818,420,50],"class_list":["post-827531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago","tag-career","tag-chicago","tag-education","tag-events","tag-higher","tag-il","tag-illinois","tag-jobs","tag-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116651596921776779","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=827531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/827531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/827532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=827531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=827531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=827531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}