Sabbatical Project

Parkland College's policies state that sabbatical leave shall be granted based on the rankings of a sabbatical leave committee. Every year, faculty compete with each other by submitting proposals to the committee based on written guidelines. Since the proposals are competitive, a great deal of time and energy is spent writing and revising the proposals. In my case, I had to submit my proposal three times in three years before it was approved. In each case, the committee members had different feedback and I aligned my proposal to their priorities. In the final proposal that was accepted, I included a professional development component in the form of a service learning project: "By volunteering my services to a non-profit organization, I hope to be able to help solve some of their marketing communication needs with a dynamic and creative web site design. Many non-profits do not have the budget to hire professionals to design their websites. By offering my services and creativity, I will be volunteering my time for a good cause, learning new skills and gaining personal satisfaction at the same time." After considering several options, I made a commitment to the University YMCA to re-design their web site because my personal priorities aligned with the organization's mission statement and objectives. For them, the timing was perfect because their national office has just rolled out a new branding initiative with a new logo. The entire design process has been recorded on this project page: www.electric-pictures.com/staging/ymca.

Preparing for the Sabbatical

I am an associate professor at Parkland College in Champaign IL USA. After teaching graphic design full-time for 10 years, I'm very pleased to be taking a semester off for sabbatical leave in spring 2011. My sabbatical application was approved on December 22, 2009 and we immediately starting making plans. With an extented period of time available for recuperation and renewal, my partner and I wanted to do some serious traveling. At first, we thought an around-the-world trip would be rather exciting, but both the cost and weather proved to be challenging. So we narrowed our choices down to destinations where the weather was good and our dollars could be stretched as much as possible. After consulting with a travel agent who specialized in multi-destination fares (www.justfares.com), we ended up with an itinerary that included Bangkok, Kolkata, Darjeeling, Singapore, Bali and Tokyo. Because we wanted flexibility in our dates, we booked only the first and last part of our itinerary. This way, we can stay longer if we liked one particular location and leave if we didn't. We've never had the luxury to be able to travel this way, so this is particularly exciting. The best part: we leave on January 1, 2011. What a great way to start a new year!