on sabbatical: a refreshing pause
TRANSCRIPT
BUSINESS
F R O M T H E A C S M E E T I N G
ON SABBATICAL: A REFRESHING PAUSE Industrial researchers emerge with new skills and a reinvigorated sense of purpose SOPHIE L. WILKINSON, C&EN WASHI
WHAT COULD BE MORE RE-
freshing for a star employee than a lengthy break from business as usual? Throw in the chance to
broaden skills and extend contacts, and the interlude can benefit the employee's company as well.
Professors have taken advantage of these breaks for years, but there's no reason the privilege of a sabbatical should be reserved solely for academics. In fact, some chemical companies that want to reward and motivate researchers or pick up new knowledge without increasing staff size are experimenting with sabbaticals.
DuPont and FMC are among the firms whose employees discussed the costs, benefits, and logistics of industrial sabbaticals during a presidential event symposium on this topic at the recent American Chemical Society national meeting in San Diego.
Between 1990 and 1999, DuPont's crop protection unit sent one to three employees off on sabbatical eachyear.The employees could opt to perform research with an outside collaborator; carry out a literature survey or write a review; teach or take a course at a university; learn new skills at a leading institution; or visit customers, scientists, and "key influencers" to identify new opportunities for research, said Elmo M. Beyer, vice president of strategic R&D planning in DuPont's agriculture and nutrition businesses, which include the crop protection unit. Currently, the program is on hiatus while the firm works through some recent acquisitions and restructuring.
THE SABBATICAL was the plum at the core of the unit's Scientific Leadership Award. A team sponsored by Beyer established the program in 1990 to inspire scientific and technical leadership, and he found it to be highly motivational.
"It provided a tangible award young scientists could aspire to—a gold ring they might grab hold of as they went through their career," he explained. "It provided clear examples of what the peer group said
GTON
were role model leaders. It helped demonstrate that scientific excellence is valued. It was rejuvenating—a shot in the arm for people to go into a different environment. It stimulated innovation and helped import new technologies. It built stronger external bridges around the world. It could be used as a recruiting tool, and it helped retain key scientists."
The recipients shared certain characteristics: They "inspired creativity and innovation, championed ideas, encouraged risk-taking, and were respected and sought out as technical experts," Beyer said. Other traits included being an effective team player and networker, as well as being a supporter of the business' vision.
The sabbatical offered an opportunity to pursue a "professional growth experience based on an individual's scientific or business interests," Beyer said. The employee spent six months away from the regular work assignment and was backed with full pay and a budget to cover expenses such as housing, travel for the recipient and family, car rental, and shipments of office and household goods.
Additionally "management ensured that the period away from normal responsibilities would have no adverse effect on the
CATCHING RAYS Kleier made the most of his sabbatical posting in California, including sight-seeing on weekends.
recipient's performance evaluation," Beyer said.
That kind of support can relieve scientists of many possible worries and duties. Even so, "a lot of planning needs to go into a sabbatical," according to Daniel A. Kleier, a DuPont agricultural products research fellow who won the Scientific Leadership Award in 1998. Questions concerning what project to take up, when to go, and how to proceed have to be settled.
In Kleier's case, this strategizing extended beyond himself, since his wife and son joined him on his sabbatical in San Diego. Kleier's wife arranged leave from her high school math teaching position. Their son transferred to a San Diego high school for the spring semester of his junior year. And their daughter and her husband house-sat for the Kleiers while they were away
KLEIER JOINED the San Diego-based molecular modeling company Molecular Simulations Inc. (MSI) as a visiting staff member during his sabbatical. MSI supplied him with office space, a high-powered workstation, and its entire suite of molecular modeling software. Kleier had been using some of this software at DuPont, but wanted to learn "a lot of new techniques for molecular modeling. This gave me the opportunity to play around with the software and determine what its applications might be when I returned to DuPont." He mastered tools for tasks such as docking ligands in enzyme active sites and has begun applying what he learned at MSI to projects back at DuPont.
For its part, MSI "came to a much better understanding of the needs of a customer like myself doing computational chemistry in a crop protection products environment," Kleier said. "We have a much stronger relationship with MSI as a result, and we make much better use of their tools. They have paid us a number of visits to help out—more than in the past."
At the time Kleier departed for his sabbatical, he was head of a six-membered computational chemistry group at DuPont. "Some of the problems of planning the sabbatical were because I needed to make sure there was a good transition of leadership of that team while I was off learning new things," he said.
"The two transitions in group leadership —at the beginning and end of the sabbatical—prompted some members of the group to ask questions like 'Who's in charge of this group?'" Kleier recalled. 'And there was a disruption in work flow" Most of the projects that he had going when he
2 2 C & E N / A P R I L 3 0 . 2 0 0 1 H T T P : / / P U B S . A C S . O R G / C E N
left were put on the back burner, and some were closed. "My coworkers picked up some of the projects, so that was an additional workload for them."
While he was on leave, Kleier usually spent an hour per day answering his e-mail. "That enabled me to stay in contact with my workgroup," he said, "but it was also a temptation to get involved in the crisis of the day"
Kleier's California adventure was not his first such experience. He also went on ayear-long internal sabbatical at DuPont's central R&D unit eight years ago. At the time, he was a principal investigator in chemical discovery in the agricultural products unit. Because the transfer was in-house, it was "much easier for me to keep in touch with my work group," he said. The experience "resulted in great networking, and it raised fewer concerns about proprietary information. But it gave me less exposure to new ideas and new people and new places."
Kleier chose to spend his sabbaticals in industry But other industrial researchers cross the cultural divide into academia. For instance, Blaik P. Hailing, a senior research associate in discovery research at FMC,
SOMETHING NEW Hailing was able to use his sabbatical to "develop basic new skill sets that had been completely unfamiliar to me up to that time."
spent his sabbatical in the lab of May R. Berenbaum, head of the entomology department at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. With her guidance, "I initiated myself into the mysteries of recombinant DNA research," Hailing said.
As part of the arrangement, he met every few weeks with Mary A. Schuler, a professor of cell and structural biology, biochemistry, and plant biology who is an expert in cloning and protein expression.
Hailing undertook his sabbatical to "develop basic new skill sets that had been completely unfamiliar to me up to that time. When I was trained in conventional physiology and biochemistry, molecular biology's significance and impact were still under debate," he said. "Like a lot of my peers, in the ensuing years I was always quick to assert that I understood the basic principles of cloning. The problem was, I couldn't do any practical bench work in the area whatsoever."
His lack of training in molecular biology didn't prove to be much of a problem at first. But by the early 1990s, molecular biology was becoming more important to FMC's screening strategies.
"It soon became apparent to a number of us that if we did not gain some basic capabilities in genetic isolation and protein expression and overexpression, this type of strategy was never going to be sustainable," Hailing recalled. "The prob-
discover spectrum
I c h e m i c a l M f q . C o r e
J i l l Slflff BULK & SEMI-BULK
Request your New 2001 BULK catalog TODAY! -> Phl'à CjJSJJJJiîilk
•L300^-&,vo-\a
HTTP: / / P U B S . ACS.ORG/CEN C&EN / APRIL 30 , 2001 23
Call us , were HERE TI help
Rft lAml îïlnii4riK#JliL fifEM«rai9l fAmmmUl$w)a:MëMù3MëËÊi9}kmkm r * IIIMMIMIIIII I
www. spectrumlfdfdfdfdfdfdfdf
-» ijiJSirjJ]] ^VJJÎhB^JS
-> Ρ\α\ηηί\ΰ3ίϊϊίΰίϊ\ \ni'ofmroi\mrov -> Ρΐ\π\ΰ\3 Zhv ΰι\υίΰηηΐ'όί\ϋη -> Î i l I J JDlJ jy j J ' Î 'ά ϋίϊΰΟΪΪΒΰ
BUSINESS
lem was, we were going through a downsizing cycle, and hiring new molecular biologists was not a practical option. We realized that if we didn't go out and learn these skills ourselves and bring them back in we weren't ever going to obtain them."
FMC doesn't have an industrial sabbatical program of its own. However, the company is part of an industrial coalition that funds the National Center for Supercom-puting Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
"NCSA staff were willing to intervene in setting up collaborations between their industrial partners and University of Illinois researchers," Hailing said. "It was through their efforts that I was able to jury-rig a sabbatical in the lab of a principal investigator with whom I had no prior relationship." In setting up these kinds of collaborations, FMC has determined that it's "extremely important to have somebody negotiating on the other side who understands the motivations and needs of both parties.
"The basic mission of a university is to teach," Hailing noted, "and if you set up
collaborations that try to remain as true to that mission as possible—instead of trying to use the university as a subcontracting research group—then you probably endup with everybody more satisfied with the outcome." He also recommended trying "to learn some kind of technology/ process/methodology that they've already got in place, rather than trying to enlist the university to help you develop a new widget."
PROGRAMS SET UP WITH pharmacology medicinal chemistry, or toxicology departments tend to go smoothly and work out well, his firm has found out, because those people and organizations have been working with chemical and pharmaceutical companies for years. "They are quite well versed in the exigencies of contracts and they understand the peculiarities of proprietary information," Hailing said. "Setting up programs with biology departments has not typically been quite as easy All of the ambiguity and confusion you find currently around biotechnology patenting hasn't helped that situation."
Hailing said such issues are pertinent
for the sabbatical candidate "because when you run into questions about what happens with corporate work that's done at the university you are going to become the focal point for any disagreements or tensions that develop between the school and the company" For instance, he got caught between the university and company accountants who "each had a somewhat different idea about how quickly bills for overhead charges needed to be paid off." This minor difference of opinion gave Hailing a "sense for just how vulnerable and exposed somebody could end up feeling in that kind of situation."
Industrial scientists may feel at sea in academe for other reasons as well. Hailing confessed that "there is something fairly intimidating about becoming a novice once again after completing boot camp, graduate school, and a post-doc and carving out an area of expertise for yourself as an authenticated authority. It's hard to lay down the mantle of authority and once again take up a backpack and notebook and reenter the student proletariat."
From a more practical standpoint,
Commercial quantities of triisopropyl borate, now available from DuPont, just might make your day. Use it to produce pharmaceuticals, agricultural chemicals, or other things not yet imagined. Call us at 1-800-231-0998. While you're at it, be sure to ask about (gQJOS^ our newly available triphenylboron. N y i 0 n intermediates
& Specialties
24 C&EN / APRIL 30, 2001 H T T P : / / P U B S . A C S . O R G / C E N
HARNESS, DICKEY & PIERCE, P.L.C. Specializing in Intellectual Property Law since 1921.
Troy, Ml
MEUSE Ann Arbor. Ml ΜΕΙΜΜΜΙΙΙΙ]
Washinaton, D.C, 202 835-7480
h ttp.//www. hdp.com
Patent and Trademark Causes Throughout the World Β happy.
m? i l
© 2000 DuPont
"you won't know what you've got until it's gone," Hailing said. "You'll realize how much you depend on the infrastructure back at your company—colleagues, technicians, administrative assistants that know your peculiarities, purchasing agents, the information technology support, the corporate databases."
He added that workplace safety, which is heavily emphasized in industry, may get short shrift on campus or overseas. "You may feel compelled to find a diplomatic way of sitting down with your host and suggesting that it's time to review some basic procedures:"
Hailing listed some other impediments that may interfere with a sabbatical program. One he referred to as "troubles back at the ranch, where your company has been right-sized to anorexia. They may have arrived at a state where it becomes extremely difficult to surrender a really good researcher for any extended period of time."
FREEDOM On his sabbatical, Woolard reveled in doing science all day without the usual business interruptions.
The popularity of team-based work units can present a problem too. "If your team is judged collectively on productivity, and bonuses and performance evaluations are determined for that team, there could be resistance about losing one of the more productive workers." At the other extreme, Hailing said, there's a risk that the company may realize, "Gee, we get along pretty good without you."
Given these difficulties, why undertake the dislocations, inconvenience, complications, and opportunities for embarrassment associated with sabbaticals? "The potential for corporate and personal transformation is tremendous," Hailing said. "The skills and technologies that FMC personnel have brought back from various
collaborations have had a significant effect on shaping our current discovery program. Our collaborations have affected the very way that we do our work."
At the same time, hosting an industrial researcher gives an academician "a chance to talk to an insider and maybe find out how to better craft grant proposals that are looking for industry funding," Hailing said. "It's an opportunity for students to learn what it's like to work in the corporate world. And it's a chance for you to do some teaching. I gave a seminar and a couple of tutorials as away to sing for my supper."
Frank W)olard, now a group leader at ChemRx Advanced Technologies, also chose academia for his sabbatical. Eight years after his postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley he returned to the campus in 1996 for a sabbatical in the lab of Jonathan A. Ellman, a professor of organic and bioorganic chemistry
Woolard's firm at the time, Zeneca Ag Products, had endured five changes of ownership as the industry consolidated during the 1980s and early 1990s. "We were down to about half staff, mostly due to attrition and hiring freezes," he said. "The staff was rapidly graying. Our youngest Ph.D. had eight years of service." Under those conditions, he added, "you run the risk of get t ing stale. A research department needs a constant influx—particularly from new hires, new ideas, new technologies, new attitudes— to stay vibrant.
"We weren't getting that, so the department manager decided we were going to have to do this on our own with existing staff." Thus began a program to send a Ph.D. chemist into academia for anywhere from six months to a year to intensively study something new that they could bring back to the company. Zeneca worked through the logistics and chose to circumvent potential intellectual property wrangles by forsaking all rights.
Woolard ended up spending 15 months in Ellman's lab. He acknowledged that "a company that puts a recipient into an environment like this goes for a certain period of time without the benefit of that employee's work." The company is also going to be shelling out benefits and salary Woolard estimates his sabbatical cost his firm about $200,000 in salary, benefits,
equipment, and overhead costs. "But it should be considered as an investment, because you will likely get back a highly charged, rejuvenated person with new skills, new knowledge, and new ambitions," he said.
But the benefits don't just flow to the sabbatical recipients and their companies. "The academic gets a highly capable, skilled researcher with a very short start-up
time for essentially the price of a lab bench," Woolard said.
Woolard accepted "a challenging solid-phase synthesis problem." He also audited courses in bioorganic chemistry and combinatorial chemistry
Although he missed the comforts of his well-equipped and -supported industrial
lab, Woolard was delighted to find that "from dawn until dusk, all I had to do was the science. There were no extraneous meetings, no phones, no fixed schedules, no calendars. I could just do the science."
EACH WEEKp Ellman met with groups of three or four of his lab members to discuss progress, problems, and possible solutions for their research projects. Ellman also held a meeting with the entire 15-member lab group on a weekly basis. "People could talk about anything related to the interests of the group: synthetic methodology bioorganic chemistry, genomics, enzymology," Woolard said. "So I learned a tremendous amount from them."
In turn, Woolard gave a presentation to the group describing the history structure, and science of the agrochemicals business. "It was a golden opportunity to spread the word about one facet of industrial chemistry and what it is like to be a part of it." he said.
His industrial perspective was valuable on a more personal plane as well. * After the novelty of being the resident geezer wore off and I was just another member of the group," Woolard said, "people would start to come around and say, 'What's it like being in industry? What do you do all day? Do you get projects assigned? What do you look for in a job candidate?' It was clear that they knew little about the environment in which they were going to spend the bulk of their working years."
Clearly, a firm's investment in a sabbatical can pay dividends far beyond company walls. •
After the novelty of being the resident geezer wore off, people would start to come around and say, 'What's it like being in industry?'"
H T T P : / / P U B S . A C S . O R G / C E N C&EN / APRIL 30, 2001 25