{"id":8947,"date":"2023-06-16T10:23:33","date_gmt":"2023-06-16T15:23:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/provost\/?page_id=8947"},"modified":"2023-06-21T11:29:17","modified_gmt":"2023-06-21T16:29:17","slug":"2023-24-sabbatical-abstracts","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/provost\/2023-24-sabbatical-abstracts\/","title":{"rendered":"2023-24 Sabbatical Abstracts"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Prabal Adhikari, Associate Professor of Physics<\/strong>
<\/em>Quantum Computing (QC) offers an exciting new tool to study open problems in a wide range of physical systems including atomic physics, nuclear physics, high energy physics and condensed matter physics. For my sabbatical leave project, I propose to develop quantum algorithms relevant for the study of strongly coupled, confining theories such as Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), the theory of the strong force. In particular, I will investigate the effect of electric fields in a 1+1 dimensional toy model of Quantum Electrodynamics known as the Schwinger Model. In non-confining field theoretic models, electric fields lead to the spontaneous production of particle-anti-particle pairs but in confining theories producing such pairs is prohibitively expensive, the implication being that instead composite particles are pair produced. I will investigate the nature of pair production of such composite particles.

Alden Adolph, <\/strong><\/em>Associate <\/strong>Professor of Engineering Studies<\/em>
<\/strong>The highly reflective nature of snow means that it plays a critical role in the climate system; snow reflects solar energy and regulates global temperatures. Several factors lower snow\u2019s reflectivity, or albedo, such as larger snow grain sizes and impurities like dust and soot. One factor that is not well understood is how the liquid water content in snow reduces albedo. This creates uncertainty in determining how changing snow packs will impact the climate system, particularly as wet snow becomes more prevalent due to more frequent rain-on-snow events and increased melt on ice sheets and glaciers. The goal of my research is to quantify the impact of liquid water on snow albedo through measurements at a prairie site in Minnesota and at an alpine site in Colorado and through creating simulated wet snow packs and modeling the reflectivity. I will also collaborate with the Ice Drilling Program to create classroom and online active learning modules on snow albedo.

Anne Walter,<\/strong><\/em> Professor of Biology<\/em><\/strong>
<\/em>During my sabbatical I will write two types of papers based on novel aspects of the cell biology portion of our integrated introduction to chemistry and biology, ChBi 227. The first will describe how I use The Emperor of All Maladies: A History of Cancer<\/em> as a supplementary text to help show how relevant the cell biology that we our learning is to understanding, diagnosing and treating cancer. We consider the many players involved in a process of career discernment. Our second novel feature is a true research experience as part of lab. Students have been successful and some have continued in an IR so that we are \u201cclose\u201d to having a publication based on their results. I will do what is needed to complete the data, write and submit the work for publication with student authors.

Doug Beussman<\/em><\/strong>, Professor of Chemistry<\/em><\/strong>
The main focus of my sabbatical will be to complete several manuscripts describing research in my lab as well as pedagogical labs that I have developed. In addition, I would like to complete drafts of one or two book chapters to determine the feasibility of completing an undergraduate textbook focused on mass spectrometry. Some of the planned manuscripts will serve as preliminary data and demonstrate capabilities for a research grant proposal to be submitted to the National Institute of Justice during the sabbatical. I also hope to make connections with local community colleges to set up a grant proposal to the NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program, which requires participation from outside institutions.

Shelly Dickinson<\/em><\/strong>, Professor of Psychology<\/em><\/strong>
I will be merging my work as a faculty member in Psychology and Neuroscience with my (anticipated) work as the Assistant Dean for Academic Advising. I will be producing an outline of a trade book integrating the science of motivation, emotion, stress, and habit formation with the topic of student success, geared toward the general population. In collaboration with staff colleagues in CAAS, the Piper Center and Institutional Effectiveness and Assessment, I will write a paper describing our innovative expanded SOAR programming, geared towards student support offices in higher ed.
The list of book topics includes
\u25cf goals & objectives – habits to achieve them
\u25cf motivation & emotion – habits that create them
\u25cf brains & bodies – habits that support them
\u25cf learning & memory – habits to strengthen them

Dana Gross<\/em><\/strong>, Professor of Psychology<\/strong><\/em>
I plan to complete three projects. 1) I will build on my previous experiences with community-engaged research and apply my scholarly knowledge to ongoing social change efforts in Rice County to support children from birth to age 5 years. The most significant impact of the project on my professional competence will be the opportunity to create a foundation for sustainable, community-engaged child development research, involving community members and other stakeholders in all steps of the research process. 2) I will complete the process of revising the 4th edition of my infancy textbook and prepare updated versions of pedagogical materials and supplements. I will promote my book by attending and giving presentations at professional conferences. 3) I will gather information and explore the potential for my new Interim course, Gender Equality<\/em> in Norway, to count for the Ole Experience in Practice requirement in the OLE Core.

Tim Howe<\/strong><\/em>, Professor of History<\/strong><\/em>
By centering the interactions between Greco-Macedonians and indigenous populations the Oxford History of the Hellenistic World<\/em> offers a new take on the traditional historical survey of the Greco-Macedonian world from Alexander the Great of Macedon to Kleopatra VII of Egypt (356-30 BCE). The Hellenistic age was a period of substantial political, artistic, scientific, and technological development, not least because the Hellenistic rulers were able to harness the intellectual traditions and technological innovations of the conquered peoples of Anatolia, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia and India. This book project explores significant aspects of Hellenistic culture and society through the lens of the socio-political interaction between ruler and ruled. Key topics include the rise of Macedon, the campaigns of Alexander, the birth of the Hellenistic libraries, the role of the king and the indigenous federations, relations with Rome, and the continuity of Hellenistic systems in the Roman empire.

Norman Lee<\/strong><\/em>, Associate <\/strong><\/em>Professor of Biology<\/strong><\/em>
Responding appropriately to salient signals in the environment is essential for survival and reproduction. When environmental conditions change (e.g. changes in acoustic soundscapes), receivers of such signals must also adapt and respond to these changes. Among some Hawaiian populations of the pacific field cricket Teleogryllus oceanicus<\/em>, their calling songs have been undergoing rapid evolutionary change in response to selection imposed by the acoustic parasitoid fly Ormia ochracea<\/em>. As reproduction in Ormia<\/em> ochracea depends on the ability of flies to recognize and localize field cricket calling songs, flies must cope with the emergence of novel cricket songs.This proposed work will utilize a range of behavioral experiments, coupled with advanced markerless behavioral tracking techniques, to examine the role of behavioral plasticity and learning to exploit novel song types by Ormia ochracea<\/em>.

Ryota Matsuura<\/em><\/strong>, Associate Professor of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science<\/strong><\/em>
Abstract: I recently wrote an abstract algebra textbook with an innovative approach to make abstract mathematics more accessible to more students\u2014especially to those from historically marginalized groups. During my sabbatical, I will write a grant proposal to the Improving Undergraduate STEM Education (IUSE) program of the NSF. This IUSE project will create an online learning community in which undergraduate mathematics majors\u2014including students who are Black, Latinx, Indigenous, and Pacific Islander\u2014who are using my textbook and its accompanying teaching materials connect with advanced doctoral students. The project frames mathematics as a social, human activity (cf. Su, 2017), in which students work on mathematics together in their classrooms and in small online groups. The key goal of the IUSE project is to understand how college mathematics classrooms can be a welcoming, inclusive space in which students feel that they matter, so that we can broaden participation in abstract mathematics.

Danny Mu\u00f1oz-Hutchinson<\/em><\/strong>, Professor of Philosophy<\/strong><\/em>
During my sabbatical I plan to research and write a long article (50\u201370 pages) concerning the concept of consciousness in the late ancient commentaries on Aristotle\u2019s De Anima<\/em>. The article is tentatively titled \u201cThe Late De Anima<\/em> Commentators on Consciousness.\u201d My aim in this article is to show that the commentators possess an additional, alternative model of consciousness than the Post-Cartesian model that has been so influential on the Anglo-European tradition of philosophy.

Jonathan Naito<\/em><\/strong>, Associate Professor of English<\/strong><\/em>
I intend to work on two major projects during my sabbatical. The first of these projects, Inhumanities in the Age of Brexit<\/em>, addresses texts, ideas, discourses, practices, and events relevant to the \u201cInhumanities\u201d during the period in which Britain\u2019s exit from the European Union shifted from an idea to a lived reality. (In recent years, various scholars have invoked the concept of the \u201cInhumanities\u201d to challenge those who work in the humanities to more directly confront inhumanity.) I intend to craft an introduction and at least two chapters of this book-length project during my sabbatical. I also plan to complete at least one article-length chapter of a second project: British and Irish Writers and the Making of Modern Italy<\/em>. I expect the first article-length chapter to center on D.H. Lawrence.

Timothy M Rainey II<\/strong><\/em>, Assistant Professor of Religion<\/strong><\/em>
Industry of Freedom: Religion, Capitalism, and Black Economic Activism in the Age of Paul Cuffe, 1807-1817<\/em>, sets forth a historical agenda for the study of economic cultures and African American religious history. Taking the emigration of Black Loyalists to Freetown, Sierra Leone as a case study, I show how moral discourse in the nineteenth century shaped the economic imagination of free people who repatriated to Africa following the American Revolution. More broadly, the Freetown experiment demonstrates how historians might complicate Black capitalist identity by reading financial data and business records as texts through which a distinctly Africana field of thought might be discerned. For example, the liberalism of Paul Cuffe, a wealthy Black shipping captain who emigrated 38 free women and men to Freetown in 1815, is often viewed through the lens of his seeming conservative politics. However, Cuffe\u2019s mercantilist orientation was also influenced by a sacred view of Africa that informed his writing and centered economic activism within his intellectual productions.

Edmund Santurri<\/em><\/strong>, Professor of Religion and Philosophy<\/strong><\/em>
I plan to launch two independent projects during the sabbatical period: (1) Work on a draft of an essay on the theological and metaphysical implications of acknowledging the existence of genuine moral dilemmas<\/em>. Here \u201cmoral dilemma\u201d is defined technically as a situation in which an agent must do something morally wrong, no matter what available course of action is taken. I have been invited by the Journal of Religious Ethics<\/em>, the premier journal in my field, to write the essay for a \u201cfocus\u201d issue on the topic. The essay will advance my position on this subject in light of scholarly developments since the publication of my book on the topic thirty-five years ago. (2) Begin work on a philosophically enriched memoir of my time as Director of the Institute for Freedom and Community, a memoir that combines a recounting of events with philosophical reflection on principles, substantive debates, and controversies.

Katherine Tegtmeyer Pak, Professor of Political Science and Asian Studies<\/strong><\/em>
I will dedicate my sabbatical to completing Pragmatic Utopians: Paths to Environmental Sustainability in Rural Japan <\/em>multimedia digital book project, which I am co-authoring with Paul Jackson, together with Ben Gottfried, and with contributions from CURI and CIR researchers. The core question guiding Pragmatic Utopians<\/em> is: What policies and practices are available to us as we confront complex environmental challenges (pollution + climate change + energy), which threaten ecological diversity and food systems? We find our answer through a transdisciplinary investigation, which includes video recorded interviews with Japanese \u201cpragmatic utopians\u201c and analysis of land use, demographic and sociopolitical data gathered by the Japanese government. \u201cPragmatic utopians\u201d question mainstream expectations about a successful, comfortable, sensible life by building innovative schools, community practices and enterprises grounded in satoyama<\/em> relationships. The term satoyama <\/em>references sustainable, mutually beneficial human-environment land use patterns that have defined Japanese agricultural landscapes for centuries.

Mary Trull,<\/em><\/strong> Professor of English<\/strong><\/em>
<\/em><\/strong>My sabbatical will be spent completing my book manuscript titled \u201cLucretian Transformations: Early Modern English Women Writers and Atomism,\u201d and submitting it to a publisher. Newly recovered in the fifteenth century, Lucretius\u2019 poem, De rerum natura<\/em>, elicited disapproval from Christian readers for its denial of the immortality of the soul and the intervention of the gods in human destiny. The atomistic physics Lucretius outlines had a wide-ranging impact on early modern theology, political theory, and natural philosophy that is most evident in the \u201cnew science\u201d of seventeenth-century Europe. Despite being excluded from formal study of science, women writers sought out information about the new atomistic theories and integrated these ideas into their own literary works. This book manuscript examines how women writers including Aphra Behn, Lucy Hutchinson, Margaret Cavendish, and Hester Pulter appropriated Lucretian discourse and transformed it to suit their own varied ends.

Charles A. Wilson<\/em><\/strong>, Professor of Religion<\/strong><\/em>
My sabbatical research will focus on writing a chapter of a book in progress, Christology in the Wrong Place<\/em>. It will consist of study of and writing on Ludwig Feuerbach\u2019s turn to Christology in the middle of the 1840\u2019s under the influence of his reading Luther seriously for the first time in his career. His new interest in Christology allows him to concretize his famous claim that all theology is really anthropology. Feuerbach recognizes via Luther that his claim is incomplete and needing a Christological mediation through which humans learn that God appears in Christ as a human for us, in favor of us humans. By way of the mediation, humans learn in faith that God is human just as humans become divine. The Christ concretizes that theology is really anthropology. My study will unpack how the Christological insight fits in Feuerbach\u2019s intellectual development, particularly in his critique of individualism and his concern that philosophy must be concrete.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prabal Adhikari, Associate Professor of PhysicsQuantum Computing (QC) offers an exciting new tool to study open problems in a wide range of physical systems including atomic physics, nuclear physics, high […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6158,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-8947","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/provost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/provost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/provost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/provost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6158"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/provost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8947"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/provost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8991,"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/provost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/8947\/revisions\/8991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.stolaf.edu\/provost\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}