Four Milligan professors will take a sabbatical during the 2003-2004 school year: Lori Mills, Craig Farmer, R. David Roberts and Melinda Collins.
After seven years of full-time teaching, professors are eligible to apply for a sabbatical.
According to Farmer, associate professor of history and humanities, a sabbatical requires professors to submit a research proposal that the college believes in and thinks will work.
“I think students occasionally have the mistaken impression that sabbaticals are given to professors so that they can go sit on the beach somewhere, taking long naps and reading Tom Clancy novels,” said Farmer. “That’s not the way it works.”
Academic Dean Mark Matson said that faculty members should explain what they will do during the sabbatical, which is “usually a research project or some work on curricular design or advancing current teaching work that can’t happen in the normal semester workload.”
Farmer plans to begin his research this summer in Germany, reading sixteenth-century sources, and will continue his sabbatical for the entire academic year.
“I plan to research and write a book tentatively titled ‘Swearing to God: The Sixteenth-Century Oath Controversies in Context,’” said Farmer.
Mills, associate professor of psychology, plans to take a sabbatical for the fall semester.
“The main thing I plan to do is to develop a course in Cross-Cultural Psychology, which would be a psychology elective, but also an ethnic studies course,” said Mills. “I chose this time because I have really wanted to develop this course, and I thought it would be nice if I could develop it while not being concerned with working on my other courses at the same time.”
Melinda Collins, chair, area of nursing and assistant professor of nursing will also take a sabbatical.
According to Matson, although some adjunct professors were necessary in the nursing department to fill in for Collins, sabbaticals are usually covered by the areas and without replacements.
The college pays for one semester of a sabbatical; professors must obtain their own funding if they plan to be absent for longer than one semester.
Roberts, professor of Bible and chair, area of Biblical learning, has taken only one other sabbatical in 21 years at Milligan. According to Roberts, he plans to stay in the area and work on two projects, one being a survey of the Bible/Ministry graduates over the last 20 years.
“The sabbatical enables us to spend an intense period in research that allows us to reconnect with the scholarly world and ultimately to reinvigorate our teaching at Milligan,” said Farmer.