I just submitted my final manuscript.
Now I am going to Glacier National Park for some R&R and to maybe see a bear.
In December 2022, a week or so before Christmas, I sat down at my dining room table with a hot cup of French press coffee and opened a new Word document. Is there anything scarier and more dreadful than a blank Word doc? The little cursor blinking at you—mocking you, really, and all your childish aspirations to write a book and actually publish it—the inescapable whiteness of the page, clean lines, heavy air, etc. I had an ongoing joke around that same time with my friend Chris that on the first day of our sabbaticals, which were to begin in a few short weeks, in January 2023, we would both open up Word, crack our knuckles, and say, “Whelp, let’s get this show on the road!”
Page 1… Once upon a time, there was an institution known as the university… and off I’d go.
It didn’t quite turn out like that. Instead of taking a sabbatical, Chris became dean of our school. So he didn’t get a sabbatical after all, just a raise and a new title.
I got nothing. But nothing was exactly what I needed. From January 2023 until the end of May I got to sit at home every day and write—something I had dreamed about since my earliest days as a graduate student. Sure, I had to deal with the occasional panicky email from my chair or another colleague, but for the most part I was free to write this book on my own time. And it was magical. Never before in my 20+ years of teaching in higher education had I been blessed with such an expanse of time and space to do the work that I actually wanted to do.
Lots of academics have written about the strange push-pull of writing and research on the job. Yes, writing and publishing is part of your job, but at a regional campus like mine, the expectation seems to be that publishing is something you are supposed to do on your own time. That is, research and writing tend to be put on the back burner. IU Kokomo is a regional comprehensive university; our primary mission is teaching, not creating new knowledge. And yet, tenure-track and tenured faculty are expected to maintain an active record of research and publication in order to keep their jobs, advance, and get promoted.
TW: the next paragraph contains what could be construed as complaining about the hierarchies that exist in higher education between R1 faculty and those at other institutions.
However, unlike our tenure-track faculty colleagues at Bloomington, we don’t get nearly as much in the way of resources to do that work. In fact, there are whole library books at Herman B. Wells that I am not allowed to check out, simply because I am not Bloomington faculty, and therefore cannot be trusted with the knowledge in those books. So while Bloomington faculty get cushy teaching loads, teaching assistants, graders, release time out the wazoo, and even grant money and other financial considerations, regional campus faculty mostly just get a hard time about how our research doesn’t stack up against that of our AAU colleagues down in Monroe county.
So… all of that is to say that when faculty at regional campuses publish book-length research projects, it’s usually done more so out of a love for one’s intellectual labor and a genuine interest in the topic or question than a rote need to be published and attain tenured.
At the moment, I am flying to Salt Lake City on a Delta jet with really solid WiFi. In a few hours, I will take off again for Kalispell, Montana—Glacier International Airport. This week I am joining up with a cohort of faculty, staff, and administrators from across the country to learn about how the US government protects and sustains public lands and wildlife in our national parks. The project, Stewardship of Public Lands, is sponsored by the American Democracy Project and AASCU (American Association of State Colleges and Universities).
Each day will consist of hikes and interpretive opportunities with staff from the Glacier Institute, followed by time for us to work on various individual projects. Since I just finished a major writing project, my main goal this week is to take a lot of pics, post them to this newsletter, and start drafting my next big writing project: a book-length history of the Monon Trail in Indianapolis and surrounding areas. This is a book I’ve been thinking about and talking about for years, and I am excited to get started. Basically, it’s going to be a “fun” history—academic only in the sense that it will be impeccably researched and likely opinionated about the politics of trails in the US (including NIMBY-ism and other hot topics); non-academic in the sense that I want it to be accessible to general readers and (dare I say) humorous. Or as humorous and insightful as a book about a rail-trail can be.
I am also teaching an online graduate seminar at the moment, and of course there is a major project due at the end of this week (ack!), so that’s going to be interesting, too.
After several months of no posts, expect to see quite a few this week, as I take pics and throw them up on this newsletter.
Have a great week! Don’t forget the first presidential debate of the 2024 election cycle is on Thursday night on CNN.