What I Did for My Vacation BY DEAN REBECCA W. BUSHNELL

DEAN’S COLUMN Jim Abbott

here is a clichéd Ann Matter is a professor of Scholars spent the summer on For me, the great perception out there that religious studies and our new campus in chemistry, biology, pleasure of summer lay professors work only associate dean for arts and letters. physics and medical laboratories, nine months of the year, She spent the summer in while 27 undergraduates worked in the intense work of Tand that when classes end, they manuscript libraries in as summer research interns in arts research and writing. spend the remaining three months transcribing ancient Italian and and cultural institutions on and off relaxing on summer vacation. The Latin documents and studying the campus. Among graduate students, truth is that in the School of Arts books in which they are bound. Presidential Prize fellow Ksenia and Sciences, teaching and research Biology professor Dorothy Cheney Gorbenko traveled to Ukraine to go on 12 months a year. and her husband, psychology interview participants in the 2004 When my only job was to be an professor Robert Seyfarth, traveled Orange Revolution. Jeremy Pine, English professor, I loved to go to Botswana, where they have been another fellow, went to Bosnia- home after handing in final grades. studying the behavior and social Herzegovina to explore the I would just sit at my desk and relationships of baboons for relationship between nationalist work. For me, the great pleasure more than 30 years. propaganda and violence. of summer lay in the intense work Among our anthropology The School’s deans do a great of research and writing. Every faculty, Harold Dibble went on digs deal of summer planning for the summer was a kind of sabbatical. It in Egypt, Morocco and France to upcoming year, but I found time to meant that I had time to do “book investigate early Homo sapiens; attend the Shakespeare Institute, thinking,” sustained reflection, Claudia Valeggia journeyed to where leading scholars gathered in following the thread of the Argentina to conduct field research Stratford-upon-Avon to talk about scholarly story I was trying to tell. among indigenous communities, the history of staging Shakespeare’s Summer is when faculty do the and Tad Schurr was in Alaska with plays. Happily, I also managed kind of work that is not possible Native American tribes as part to find some time to work on during the of the Genographic Project. my current book, A Short when they are teaching classes, In biology, Nancy Bonini stayed Introduction to Tragedy. advising students and serving on home in her lab conducting genetic As faculty, our jobs are not administrative committees. If you experiments on fruit flies as a way defined by punching a clock. It’s took a survey of Arts and Sciences of studying neurodegenerative a tremendous privilege and faculty, you would find them disease in humans. Richard Schultz responsibility to have the ambitious spending the summer in studies was mostly on campus, submitting leisure of uninterrupted research at home, in campus libraries science papers and writing grant and reflection. The freedom of and laboratories, and on every proposals for research that will summer “vacation” permits us to continent around the globe. What include investigators from the follow our passion for learning, are they doing? In addition to biology department and the often in unexpected places. We teaching, they’re attending medical school. return to the classroom, laboratory conferences. They’re presenting Students too were hard at work and library in the fall brimming papers. They’re meeting colleagues. on scholarly endeavors. Nearly 300 with discoveries and ready for the They’re working at excavation sites undergraduates enrolled in courses challenges of a new year. or studying wildlife or working in in the Penn Summer Abroad archives and galleries and museums. program, and 47 tested the real-life Here are a few samples. implications of political theory in the Washington Program. Twenty-five Vagelos

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