Sabbaticals Awarded for 2023-2024

Congratulations to the 11 full-time faculty who have been awarded sabbatical leave for the 2023-2024 academic year. This group includes two full-year sabbaticals, four sabbaticals for Fall 2023, and five sabbaticals for Spring 2024. Projects include research, creative activity, oversight of national and regional conferences, as well as new course preparation. Below are summaries of the projects. 

Professor Glen Adsit (Spring 2024), Department of Instrumental Studies, The Hartt School

In Spring of 2024, as newly elected President of the College Band Directors National Association (CBDNA), Professor Adsit will oversee the work of 10 sub-committees and the formation and implementation of six regional conferences in 2024, and create content for and organize the 2025 national conference in Dallas. He will attend all of the regional conferences and spend time in Dallas to make arrangements for spaces, hotel rooms, and concert halls, including the planning of all juried conference offerings (e.g., panel discussions, lectures, poster sessions, concerts, CBDNA inter-collegiate band).

Professor Karen Case (Fall 2023), Department of Education, College of Education, Nursing and Health Professions

Professor Case will spend the Fall 2023 semester developing a book proposal on the leave-takings of women faculty and administrators in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Using feminist historiography, the book will provide one of the first in-depth historical analyses of what led women academicians and administrators of the 19th and early 20th centuries to submit their resignations, be forced into retirement, or leave to take on new opportunities at academic and non-academic institutions. For the purposes of this work, leave-taking may be physical and psychological. Professor Case’s book aims to provide a more realistic and inclusive view of leadership and women in the history of higher education.

Professor Michael Crosbie (Fall 2023), Department of Architecture, College of Engineering, Technology, and Architecture

Professor Crosbie will spend Spring 2024 conducting further research, documentation, and site visits for a book on the architecture and planning work of DPZ Co-Design, an award-winning practice in Miami. Their work in town and city planning, architectural design, community development, and community engagement has been pivotal in changing design attitudes about post-war suburban sprawl, promoting sustainable, walkable, place-based community design among architects and planners around the world. Over a 40-year period, the firm completed more than 300 projects internationally and was instrumental in the creation of the Congress for New Urbanism. A publisher has already expressed interest in the publication of Professor Crosbie’s book.

Associate Professor Mehmet Dede (Academic Year 2023-24), Department of Performing Arts Management, The Hartt School

Professor Dede will spend the academic year conducting field research in Europe for a book on the global live music industry. His book will be an inquiry into the relationship between artists and live performances as an economic driver of professional careers during rapid advances in technology and in the face of the worldwide pandemic that brought live performances to a halt. He plans to interview and survey musicians in different European regions, collect data and learn more about local practices to compare them to those in the United States. The book will expand on existing studies in the music industry, technology, and business. Professor Dede’s project will be partially supported by the Fulbright Program in Turkey and the Royal Academy of Music in Denmark.

Associate Professor Sarah Hart (Academic Year 2023-24), Department of Education, College of Education, Nursing and Health Professions

Professor Hart will spend the academic year writing a monograph that provides a side-by-side comparative study of the diversity of disability experiences in Aotearoa, New Zealand, and the United States. In this book, post-school transition practices will be described through the lived experiences of young adults with significant disabilities. By uncovering the opportunities for dignified transition procedures that benefit individuals and lead towards a more equitable society, this critical life stage is positioned less as a procedural function of leaving school and more so an urgent matter of social justice. The planned sabbatical activities will involve her consulting with young adults and their support networks, community groups, and academics in Aotearoa, New Zealand, where she will be based for the year.

Associate Professor Andrew Koob (Spring 2024), Department of Biology, College of Arts and Sciences

In Spring 2024, Professor Koob will complete a series of experiments and finish a research article manuscript on neurodegenerative disease. α-Synuclein (αS) is a protein that aggregates into Lewy bodies in the brains of patients with neurodegenerative disease. Astrocytes are a cell type in the brain responsible for removing and degrading excess αS through a process called autophagy. Another member of the synuclein protein family, γ-synuclein (γS), is known to inhibit αS aggregation. Students in Professor Koob’s lab have shown γS to promote cell survival and growth in astrocytes, as well as inhibit the effects of αS. His most recent research on the effects of γS and αS combined treatments in astrocytes will be completed and submitted for publication during his sabbatical. In addition, Professor Koob will continue development of a University Interdisciplinary Studies (UIS) course with a two-week study abroad component to Italy focused on historical scientific ideas and research in Italy since the Renaissance.

Professor John Nordyke (Fall 2023), Department of Visual Communication Design, Hartford Art School

During the Fall semester, Professor Nordyke will prepare for an exhibition at Surtex, North America’s premier international trade show for the sale and licensing of art to the surface design industry. It is held annually during one week in February at the Javitz Center in New York City. Surface design refers to the art and patterns seen on products from apparel, gift wrap, and kitchenware to bed linens, phone cases, and wallpaper. Buyers from retail and manufacturing brands attend Surtex to plan merchandise for the following seasons. Sellers are most commonly free-lancers like Professor Nordyke, or artist representatives who exhibit the work of freelancers. To increase one’s success, the artist/designer will demonstrate greater potential for their work if presented in collections. A collection contains one “hero print” comprising as many as 10 colors, and presented with two or more coordinates of fewer colors. Professor Nordyke plans to create twenty collections of pattern designs for this exhibition. 

Professor Jack Powell (Fall 2023), Department of Psychology, College of Arts and Sciences

During the Fall semester, Professor Powell will work on a book manuscript, update materials and practices for the teaching of several courses in Psychology, and develop two new courses for the online Master of Science in Organizational Psychology (MSOP) program. Professor Powell’s book, tentatively titled How the Need for Control Makes Us Better (and Worse) People and Societies, will explore the positive and negative effects that believing in free will (control) has on individuals and society. He proposes that a belief in free will is a “double-edged sword” that can, depending on the situation, make humans happier, healthier, more anxious, more moral, more aggressive, more helpful and more. His book will wrestle with those conflicts.

Associate Professor Rebecca Ranucci (Spring 2024), Department of Management, Marketing, and Entrepreneurship, Barney School of Business

Professor Ranucci will spend the Spring semester developing a unique data set of the publicly-traded companies in the health care sector that can be used for multiple research projects aimed at building knowledge of health care management. In addition to collecting data during the sabbatical, she plans to use the dataset to launch the first study into the temporal focus of publicly-traded health services organizations, and, by the end of the sabbatical, craft a manuscript for conference or journal submission. This work will also support Professor Ranucci’s teaching in the health care management concentration in the MBA program. Because the health care industry sits at the intersection of delivering a social and economic good, one of the dominant themes of her course is the ideological tension between social and market justice. Research in the health care industry can contribute to this important conversation around the social responsibility of organizations.

Professor Fei Xue (Spring 2024), Department of Mathematics, College of Arts and Sciences

Professor Xue’s Spring sabbatical will focus on Data Science education in three specific areas: the Interactive Assignment System for Data Science courses, a general education Data Science course, and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in undergraduate Data Science education. The Mathematics Department started the new Data Science minor program in Fall 2019 and enrolls 10 to 15 new Data Science minors each year. The new Data Science major, a collaboration among the Math Department, Computing Sciences Department, and Barney School of Business, was approved in 2021. Professor Xue’s project of expanding materials and courses for the program will help to meet the growing demand for Data Science courses in his department.

Professor Bin Zhu (Spring 2024), Department of Biology, College of Arts and Sciences

Professor Zhu’s Spring semester sabbatical project is to analyze a large amount of collected data and write a journal manuscript assessing the impacts of invasive European frogbit and its two control methods. Data collected from a project titled “Managing invasive European frogbit through research, education, and outreach in New York’s Great Lakes basin,” funded by the New York State Great Lakes Protection Fund (NYSGLPF) in 2009 and 2010, resulted in three journal articles, which only described portions of the experimental results and did not present the results at the whole ecosystem level. Professor Zhu plans to use his sabbatical to complete writing the results to address the ecosystem-level effects of this invasive plant for another article that will include all the data from all trophic levels (food chains), thereby showing the impacts on the entire ecosystem.