By Jared Fields, Sports Editor
Seven professors have been granted sabbaticals for the 2006-07 school year. Dr. Dwayne VanRheenen said the sabbaticals, or faculty renewal leaves, are usually given to five to eight professors a year to allow them time to study or write and come back to the school “refreshed.”
VanRheenen, provost of the university, said the faculty renewal leaves are selected from a faculty committee.
Those leaving on sabbatical are: Dr. Cheryl Bacon, chair of journalism and mass communication; Mr. Robert Green, professor of art and design; Dr. Fred Bailey, professor of history; Dr. Foy Mills, professor of agricultural and environmental sciences; Dr. Tim Coburn, professor of management sciences; Dr. Donald Isenhower, professor of physics; and Dr. Ken Cukrowski, professor in the Graduate School of Theology.
Bailey is taking next spring off to dedicate time to writing a book, currently titled Triumph of Aristocracy.
The book will be a culmination of about 20 years of research Bailey has done into the mindset of the southern white aristocrat during the late 19th and early 20th century.
Bailey said he wants the book to be an explanation of why the civil rights movement had such a hard time catching up in the South.
“I want to get these thoughts out for other historians to look at,” Bailey said. “Just as a mortician looks at death, I look at understanding why society has had such a difficult time.”
Isenhower will be on leave for the entire 2006-07 school year. Isenhower, in his 20th year teaching at ACU, has been on leave twice before, in the early ’90s and the spring of 1998.
He will be gone during the summer to work at Brookhaven national lab before returning to Abilene for most of the school year. In Abilene, his salary will be supplemented by some of the work he will do and grants he will receive.
“It will be a great way for me to fill the other half of my salary,” Isenhower said. He said one grant is for three years and will pay $150,000 -$180,000 to students’ salaries who work in the program also.
Isenhower will also be part of a small business innovative research program. The business could help the community and university by giving faculty a place to do other work or bring in more people capable of teaching and working on research.
Isenhower also said the school might benefit financially by being associated with it and getting money through patents the research could generate.
