UF physics professor Darin Acosta spent last fall on sabbatical in Geneva, Switzerland - well, roughly 30 stories beneath Geneva, Switzerland.
While on sabbatical, meaning leave time with either full or partial pay, Acosta spent his time doing hands-on development of the Large Hadron Collider, or as he calls it, the "atom smasher."
Without the sabbatical, Acosta said he would not have been able to work with the one-of-a-kind collider, which is underground to accommodate the 17-mile circumference of the tunnel where atoms are "smashed."
"Normally, a faculty member wouldn't be able to spend that much continuous time on an endeavor," Acosta said.
Despite the opportunity to step away from the day-to-day grind to focus on outside projects, many faculty members do not take advantage of sabbaticals because they are too rigidly structured.
UF Provost Joe Glover hopes to make sabbaticals more flexible as part of a new UF initiative.
In June, UF President Bernie Machen announced a plan to set aside $2 million per year for the next three years for "faculty enhancement."
Glover is considering using that money for a more flexible sabbatical program that he hopes to propose in mid-August.
As it is now, sabbaticals are arranged at the college level.
After working for seven years, a faculty member can apply to go on sabbatical for a semester and receive full pay or for a whole year and receive half pay.
However, this system doesn't work well for every UF college.
In the College of Medicine, many of the faculty members are specialists, so it's impossible to find replacements for their courses while they are away, said Frank Bova, Faculty Senate chairman and professor of neurological surgery and neuroscience.
Also, many of the faculty members in the college are doctors with clinical practices.
If they leave Gainesville for an extended period of time, their patients will seek other doctors, Bova said.
A sabbatical program that would allow professors to leave for shorter periods of time would better suit the college, he said.
Kirby Barrick, dean of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, said in his college, the problem is that sometimes departments have trouble funding a replacement for professors on paid leave.
Without someone to teach their classes, many professors are hesitant to leave.
Barrick said his college would benefit just from the extra funding.
"To walk away from it - even for a sabbatical - knowing that there's no funding can be discouraging," he said.
Glover said he hopes to have the program figured out by spring so faculty members can start taking time away from the classroom.
For Acosta, going on sabbatical gave him a rare opportunity to be part of history.
"There aren't so many of these experiments," he said. "Maybe once a decade, it comes along."
