Four professors have returned to teaching after taking sabbaticals and have spent their time away working on amazing projects.
Eduardo Magalhães professor of political science, John Pauley professor of philosophy, Katherine Vance professor of mathematics, and Chad Timm professor of education all took sabbaticals and spent time away from the classroom to work on projects that were submitted to Simpson for approval.
Professors can apply for sabbatical every seventh year that they work at Simpson. Professors submit their projects to the college to potentially get approved by the dean to take the next semester off to work on their projects without teaching or other distractions. Professor Magalhães took his sabbatical to design a new “reacting to the past” game based on an event in Brazilian history.
“My proposal was to work on a reacting game and I thought of the Brazilian Constituent Assembly of 1987 as a good setting for a reacting game,” Magalhães saidMagalhães looks forward to other professors helping him playtest and eventually get the game published.
Magalhães is excited to get back to teaching while he finalizes the game and ensures it plays well. Magalhães said he needed the break, due to feeling a sense of burnout, but is still glad to resume teaching.
He’s already planning out another game based on the Soviet Politburo Meeting of 1986 once he is done with his current game.
In the philosophy department, Professor Pauley spent time overseas in Ireland to research the differences and similarities of the agricultural systems between Ireland and the US.
“I am working on political and ecological issues with regard to mass production agriculture,” Pauley said. His sabbatical was spent writing and presenting research at the University of Galway as well as doing research in the field.
Although he misses the beauty of Ireland, he looks forward to implementing everything he learned overseas into his classes.
Another trip took Professor Vance to Europe to visit family in Denmark while continuing to research mathematical knots.
“My research that I’ve been doing since I was in graduate school was in knot theory, ” Vance stated. Her sabbatical was spent at a local Danish institute that gave her an office and time to speak and attend seminars. She took her entire family with her and spent six months overseas.
She is glad to be back and is looking to run the Bryan Summer Research Program which focuses on getting students experience in the field and working on undergraduate projects that they get paid for. Vance would like to see students potentially work in the field of mathematical knots during the program.
Finally, Professor Timm made the long trek to his office to work on a book he started three years ago
“The book is currently in press with the publisher, McFarland & Company, and should be in print in the spring of 2025. It will be titled ‘Teaching History with Popular Media: Strategies for Inquiry-Based Learning.’,” Timm wrote. He’s been working on this book for the past three years and during his sabbatical wrote over 90,000 words, or 324 pages, between Jan. 8 and June 1.
He plans to use the book for his secondary social studies methods class once it’s published. This was Timm’s first semester off in 29 years, and he missed interacting with his favorite people and is thrilled to be back.
