Elon University's service sabbatical program allows staff members to explore their service interests in depth while on leave from their jobs.

Staff Take a Service Break

In the past five years at Elon University in Elon, North Carolina, in-depth service projects have included renovating a house, creating program materials for a women’s shelter, clearing hiking trails for the forestry department, and recording a CD with local musicians to raise money for charity. But the volunteers working on these projects weren’t Elon students. They were full-time staff members at the university, and their service projects took place primarily during the normal workweek. These staff members were able to take the time away from their jobs for volunteer service through a unique “service sabbatical” program at Elon. The program operates under the umbrella of Project Pericles, an initiative sponsored by the Eugene Lang foundation to help instill civic responsibility throughout the campus at ten liberal arts colleges.

An Integrated Vision for Service

While full-time faculty members have long had the traditional sabbatical as a venue for exploring both their research and service interests away from the university, there wasn’t any similar option for staff members, explains Tom Arcaro, director of Project Pericles at Elon. So, in 2002, when Elon submitted a proposal to bring a Project Pericles program to campus, Arcaro was certain to include a service option for staff members in the proposal. “As a sociologist, I’m acutely aware of the caste-like settings at campuses—there’s the faculty, the students, and there’s the staff, and then there’s the blue-collar staff like the maintenance workers.” Arcaro says. “It’s really socially destructive, and I was adamant that we integrate the staff into this vision we were building for service.” Arcaro and his colleagues also wanted students to see models of service all over campus—not just from faculty members or other students. Part of the charge the Lang Foundation issued when selecting Project Pericles schools was that the program’s activities must reach across campus and involve the entire community.

Arcaro drew up a basic plan for service sabbaticals: they would be open to full-time Elon staff members with at least two years of service to the university. The sabbaticals would take place during normal working hours, and would last a month. Service would take place at sites at which the volunteer had an established commitment and service record. Volunteers would be paid their regular Elon salary during their sabbatical, and funding from Project Pericles would cover their absence from their regular job.

Since its inception in 2003, the sabbatical program has evolved to fit volunteers’ needs, Arcaro says. Applications for sabbaticals are now accepted on a rolling basis, rather than once per year as originally planned, and volunteers may do sabbaticals that last anywhere from several days up to a full month. An average of four staff members has completed sabbaticals each year since the program started.

“Win-win-win”

When Elon’s Project Pericles proposal was accepted in 2003, it came with $50,000 of funding from the Lang foundation—an amount that Elon matched. But one of the biggest benefits of the service sabbaticals program is that it requires very little money to run, says Nancy Midgette, Elon’s associate provost. A small amount of funding from the Project Pericles budget is set aside to cover staff members’ replacements when they are out on sabbaticals. In fact, Midgette explains, the supervisors and coworkers of staff members selected for sabbaticals are often so excited that they rearrange their own schedules to cover for the volunteer, eliminating the need to hire a temporary replacement. “So many offices take pride that someone from their area has received a service sabbatical,” Midgette says. Support from Elon administrators like Midgette and President Leo Lambert has helped build institutional momentum for the sabbatical program. “Supervisors have been incredibly supportive,” Arcaro says. “We work out the service to be held at an ‘ebb’ time for a particular unit, and there’s a lot of cooperative discussion.”

Arcaro calls the service sabbaticals an example of a “win-win-win” campus program: it’s a win for the staff employees, because they’re able to take a break from the daily grind and volunteer their time to a cause that’s meaningful to them. It’s a win for the organizations that receive free, knowledgeable, and enthusiastic help. And it’s a win for students, who see that the people who keep their campus running are also dedicated to service in the community. “A lot of staff members interact with students on a regular basis, and the students ask 'Where were you?’” Arcaro explains. “When the staff member says ‘Oh, I was on my service sabbatical’ and tells the students about it, [students] get a great role model. They really learn from seeing this happen.”  

Elon staffers Ray Pruitt (physical plant), Susan Patton (registrar's office), Christopher Eyl (university relations), and David Morton (university relations) each completed a service sabbatical.

Christmas Cheer

Elon senior audio producer Bryan Baker had already been deeply involved with Project Pericles, shooting documentary footage of student projects abroad, when he came up with the idea for his service sabbatical. As a longtime Elon resident and recording engineer, he knew many talented local musicians. “I wanted to get a lot of musicians to make a compilation album and have the proceeds go to charity,” Baker explains. “I wrote the proposal for that to be a service sabbatical project, and the committee thought it was a great idea.” Baker contacted musicians and began lining up an eclectic assortment of musical styles—from jazz to rock to folk—for the CD. Because his aim was to have the album produced by fall 2006, he approached Christmas Cheer of Alamance County, an established charity that provides holiday gifts and heating assistance to low-income families and senior citizens, about marketing the album—and receiving the proceeds. “They were ecstatic,” Baker remembers. “They were able to get a lot of community support behind this album, and they convinced a lot of local employers to buy bulk orders of the CDs and give it as holiday gifts for their employees.”

Because all the musicians donated their time and Baker used Elon’s recording studios and editing equipment, the overhead for album production was extremely low—the only cost was album duplication. Baker and the musicians completed the bulk of the work during Baker’s sabbatical in July 2006. By Christmas of that year, 5,000 copies of “Christmas Cheer: From Alamance County Musicians” had sold. More copies were printed for Christmas 2007, and by early 2008, the project had netted almost $28,000 for Christmas Cheer of Alamance County.

Baker says he is thrilled with how his service sabbatical project took off. “We’ve had lots of request to do this again, from community members and businesses,” he says. Since Baker can’t take a month off work every year—at present, each staff member may only complete one service sabbatical—he’s taking a different approach. “I’m the advisor for the student radio station on campus, and we have nice facilities, so we’re staring a record label that’ll be in the same mindset as the Christmas Cheer project,” Baker explains. “It’ll be a hands-on learning experience for students, it’ll promote local music, and all the profits from albums we make will go to the Alamance-Burlington school system arts program.”

Arcaro’s goals for the future of the service sabbatical program include increasing internal publicity and encouraging more applications from staff members all over campus. “I know a lot of staffers are doing good things,” he says. “We want to help make service sabbaticals possible for them.”

For more information about Elon’s service sabbatical program and to read details about past sabbaticals, visit the service sabbaticals homepage. To learn about AAC&U’s work on civic engagement, see the civic engagement resources page.