Peru 2025

After 15+ years of teaching full-time at three different colleges, this year I had my first opportunity to take a much-needed sabbatical.  The sabbatical, a fantastic perk in academia, typically consists of a semester off from the regular duties of teaching, advising, and answering emails (at least, a break from answering emails daily) to give one time and space to work on their research.  At small colleges like mine, how one spends their time on sabbatical is relatively flexible; while some work on research, publish articles, or write a book, I elected to spend this semester re-working and updating two courses I teach regularly that I felt had become a bit dated and stale.  Additionally, I still had some funding available from when I started that was never used.  While people normally spend those funds on conference travel or equipment to aid their research, I was able to talk my boss into letting me use the balance of these funds to finance what I’m calling a “scouting trip” for a future international student travel course.  I’ve had the good fortune to lead or co-lead a number of such trips over the last 15 years from Australia to Japan, Europe, and a domestic trip to New Orleans.  Most recently, we took students to Ireland/Northern Ireland in 2023 (link to the blog from the Ireland trip included below).  Now, I’m about embark on a trip to Peru.  If it goes well, I’ll use what I’ve learned on the ground in-country to develop a May Term travel course to travel there with students.

Peace & Conflict in Northern Ireland blog:  https://coe2023peaceandconflict.blogspot.com/