The Chemist: To Sabbatical or Not to Sabbatical, That is the Question

One of the perks of being a college professor is having the opportunity to take a sabbatical. At SJU you get a one-semester sabbatical every 6 years. If you wait 12 years, you get a full year. Thus, I decided to save up my sabbatical for the one-year option.

In July 2019 with my year-long sabbatical approaching, I knew wanted to find a research opportunity overseas. I thought I would swing for the fences– try to find someone doing carbon dioxide activation research, my sub-area of organometallic chemistry. I made a short list of top research groups working around the world whose research was most interesting to me.

Right at the top of the list was the group of Dr. Yunho Lee, then at KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology). His group had been publishing, in my view, some of the most exciting papers in the area of carbon dioxide activation. Sending a cold email to someone you have never met is always a bit weird, but I went for it anyways. I was glad I did. Yunho replied quickly and positively to my email and offered to host me! He also let me know that his group was just about to relocate to Seoul National University, the top university in Korea. Thus, the Inorganic Molecular Conversion Lab at SNU became the potential location of my sabbatical.

After many emails back and forth with Yunho, by the winter of 2020 we had a hopeful plan in place. Emily and I would arrive in Seoul in June, and I would begin research in the Lee group a couple of weeks after our arrival. As you know already, COVID-19 had other ideas. In March, Yunho and I found ourselves in the same boat, teaching our classes remotely via Zoom. By the end of April though, Yunho reported that his research group was getting back up and running, even as coronavirus cases were peaking in Philadelphia. Unfortunately, it was already late April, and we had not yet started any of the paperwork for visas due to all of the uncertainty.

Clearly some kind of delay was required. Should we delay for a semester? Should we delay for a year like some of my colleagues? The reality of course is that we had little control over which option might actually be possible. Thankfully, my Provost and department chair gave me some time to figure out if a sabbatical was still possible for academic year 2020-21. If things were still not cleared up by the middle of July, then they would let me delay by one semester.

Meanwhile, Yunho found out that SNU was still able to file visa requests for visiting researchers. However, it was not clear if visas were really being approved by the government. Indeed, immigration policies were being updated all the time with more restrictions being added regularly. With nothing to lose, we just went ahead and moved forward. As Yunho said in an email to me: “I believe one way to find out is to try.” Thus began the avalanche of paperwork that extended over most of the month of May. I completed no fewer than five rounds of emails, each with multiple documents. The Lee group completed more forms that were only available in Korean.  

Finally on June 11th, we received documents that we then took to the South Korean consulate in New York City on June 26th. Two weeks later we were able to download our visas. Our departure was set for July 30. The sabbatical was on!