Sabbaticals develop personal careers; help enhance classroom experiences
By: Troy Montigney
Issue date: 2/12/08 Section: News
Biology department chair Dana Dudle said she could not believe her good fortune when she received a short, informal note inviting her to study in a country halfway around the world.
The associate professor who specializes in plant biology and evolution was busy planning a sabbatical for the 2006-2007 academic year that would take her to New Zealand to study red plant pigments. In the process she e-mailed Kevin S. Gould, a member of the University of Otago's botany department and one of the world's leading experts on how plants use these pigments to adapt to their environments.
"I had read his papers, and my students had read his papers in connection with some of our DePauw projects," Dudle said. "It was exciting getting an e-mail back from him saying to come over."
Nearly two years later, Dudle is back in the daily routine of teaching in the University's biology department. But the research she conducted during her five-month stay in New Zealand has profoundly impacted her career at DePauw and the educational experiences of the students she collaborates with.
"New Zealand is a leader in conservation biology, so it has been really helpful in my upper level conservation class," Dudle said. "I have students in my lab for credit all the time. They take research as a class, so the data and observations I collected have been helpful for them."
Dudle's experience abroad is just one example of many sabbaticals taken by professors in recent years. While some have traveled far and wide, others have elected to stay nearby. Most agree that regardless of the leave's location, they have returned to DePauw better prepared to conduct the classes that are so integral to their profession.
One semester or one year?
While Dudle's research took her away from campus for an entire academic year, other faculty members have elected to complete their individual projects in a semester's time.
Communication professor Jen Adams explained this is often a result of the individual's rank within his or her department.
"The administration sets the rules for how often professors take sabbaticals, and there are differences between pre- and post-tenure," she said. "Junior faculty are granted a one-semester sabbatical after a successful third-year performance review."
Such was the case for Adams this past semester. Having received a positive review after the spring 2007 semester, she was granted a sabbatical for fall 2007; a leave of absence she spent at her home in Martinsville compiling a literary proposal.
"Many people do choose to work on a teaching project, but I pursued outside research," Adams said. "In short, a few years ago, I somewhat accidentally discovered a prominent suffragist from Lafayette, Ind., named Helen Gougar. She was active at the end of the nineteenth century and most of her speeches and writings are no longer easily available."
Adams pored through hundreds of pages of photocopies she had archived over the years in an effort to find Gougar's complete works. The results of her sabbatical are what she hoped would be "a coherent body of rhetorical discourse supporting women's suffrage and temperance."
Faculty development and course enhancement
In the same way that faculty members must submit proposals for fellowships to the Faculty Development Committee, they must also prepare a detailed prospectus about how they intend to use their sabbatical.
According to the committee's guidelines for preparing sabbatical proposals, "the primary objective of a leave is to provide reassigned time from teaching and service for advancing the professional development of the faculty member and helping to maintain and improve the quality of intellectual life at DePauw."
The guidelines are clear as to what "professional development" entails. Sabbatical projects should be compatible with the faculty member's specialty or serve to enhance his or her role in the classroom upon returning to DePauw.
In addition to making presentations to both the Botanical Society of America and Ecology Society of America, Dudle delivered one to colleagues and students in November. She also completed a Web site chronicling her research, complete with blog entries from the trip and hundreds of photographs.
Professor David Bohmer also took a sabbatical from his duties as Director of the Media Fellows Program this past fall to work on a book about the historical and cultural significance of baseball.
"I completed all but one of the interviews I intended to do," he said. "Basically, I completed the research I hoped to complete and have drafts of five of the nine chapters I had planned to write. It enabled me to make a lot of progress and I had a lot of background reading to do for the project, too."
Bohmer's idea for the book project was an offshoot from an on-campus Winter Term course he had taught for a number of years - "Baseball as Part of American History and Culture." His experiences writing the book allowed him to teach a stronger version of the course in January.
"I came back and taught the class this term again after the research I did," he said. "I had a lot more information and insights to offer the class that I did before."
In addition to a personal goal of submitting her research about Gougar to local publishing houses, Adams said she believes the sabbatical brought about a change in her approach to education.
"Reflecting back on this, I was surprised by how much fun research can be," she said. "Sabbaticals relieved the pressure I feel to focus exclusively on teaching. ... I think that the things I read and learned will find their way into some of the upper-level courses that I teach, so I think that it was a great opportunity that will go a long way in my career."
The associate professor who specializes in plant biology and evolution was busy planning a sabbatical for the 2006-2007 academic year that would take her to New Zealand to study red plant pigments. In the process she e-mailed Kevin S. Gould, a member of the University of Otago's botany department and one of the world's leading experts on how plants use these pigments to adapt to their environments.
"I had read his papers, and my students had read his papers in connection with some of our DePauw projects," Dudle said. "It was exciting getting an e-mail back from him saying to come over."
Nearly two years later, Dudle is back in the daily routine of teaching in the University's biology department. But the research she conducted during her five-month stay in New Zealand has profoundly impacted her career at DePauw and the educational experiences of the students she collaborates with.
"New Zealand is a leader in conservation biology, so it has been really helpful in my upper level conservation class," Dudle said. "I have students in my lab for credit all the time. They take research as a class, so the data and observations I collected have been helpful for them."
Dudle's experience abroad is just one example of many sabbaticals taken by professors in recent years. While some have traveled far and wide, others have elected to stay nearby. Most agree that regardless of the leave's location, they have returned to DePauw better prepared to conduct the classes that are so integral to their profession.
One semester or one year?
While Dudle's research took her away from campus for an entire academic year, other faculty members have elected to complete their individual projects in a semester's time.
Communication professor Jen Adams explained this is often a result of the individual's rank within his or her department.
"The administration sets the rules for how often professors take sabbaticals, and there are differences between pre- and post-tenure," she said. "Junior faculty are granted a one-semester sabbatical after a successful third-year performance review."
Such was the case for Adams this past semester. Having received a positive review after the spring 2007 semester, she was granted a sabbatical for fall 2007; a leave of absence she spent at her home in Martinsville compiling a literary proposal.
"Many people do choose to work on a teaching project, but I pursued outside research," Adams said. "In short, a few years ago, I somewhat accidentally discovered a prominent suffragist from Lafayette, Ind., named Helen Gougar. She was active at the end of the nineteenth century and most of her speeches and writings are no longer easily available."
Adams pored through hundreds of pages of photocopies she had archived over the years in an effort to find Gougar's complete works. The results of her sabbatical are what she hoped would be "a coherent body of rhetorical discourse supporting women's suffrage and temperance."
Faculty development and course enhancement
In the same way that faculty members must submit proposals for fellowships to the Faculty Development Committee, they must also prepare a detailed prospectus about how they intend to use their sabbatical.
According to the committee's guidelines for preparing sabbatical proposals, "the primary objective of a leave is to provide reassigned time from teaching and service for advancing the professional development of the faculty member and helping to maintain and improve the quality of intellectual life at DePauw."
The guidelines are clear as to what "professional development" entails. Sabbatical projects should be compatible with the faculty member's specialty or serve to enhance his or her role in the classroom upon returning to DePauw.
In addition to making presentations to both the Botanical Society of America and Ecology Society of America, Dudle delivered one to colleagues and students in November. She also completed a Web site chronicling her research, complete with blog entries from the trip and hundreds of photographs.
Professor David Bohmer also took a sabbatical from his duties as Director of the Media Fellows Program this past fall to work on a book about the historical and cultural significance of baseball.
"I completed all but one of the interviews I intended to do," he said. "Basically, I completed the research I hoped to complete and have drafts of five of the nine chapters I had planned to write. It enabled me to make a lot of progress and I had a lot of background reading to do for the project, too."
Bohmer's idea for the book project was an offshoot from an on-campus Winter Term course he had taught for a number of years - "Baseball as Part of American History and Culture." His experiences writing the book allowed him to teach a stronger version of the course in January.
"I came back and taught the class this term again after the research I did," he said. "I had a lot more information and insights to offer the class that I did before."
In addition to a personal goal of submitting her research about Gougar to local publishing houses, Adams said she believes the sabbatical brought about a change in her approach to education.
"Reflecting back on this, I was surprised by how much fun research can be," she said. "Sabbaticals relieved the pressure I feel to focus exclusively on teaching. ... I think that the things I read and learned will find their way into some of the upper-level courses that I teach, so I think that it was a great opportunity that will go a long way in my career."
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