Sabbaticals Support University Mission
Concordia employees have and continue to participate in activities that support and enhance the mission of the University. Four faculty members will take sabbatical leaves during the 2008-2009 academic year to further their education.
Faculty include professor of Communication Studies Dr. Lori Charron, professor of management and law Thomas Hanson, JD, vice president for Student Services Dr. Miriam Luebke, and professor of History Dr. Thomas Saylor.
Dr. Lori Charron is spending her sabbatical researching three areas of professional interest: interpersonal communication, corporate ethics and communication education. Charron’s research began in mid-May and will examine the impact interpersonal communication training has on corporate culture. Charron is following participants of the training created by Susan Scott that is based on her book, “Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work & in Life, One Conversation at a Time.” This training, Fierce!, is an interpersonal communication corporate training program. Its fundamental belief is that organizations are successful “one conversation at a time” (www.fierceinc.com). Her longitudinal research will follow the participants as the training will be brought to the participant’s individual school district or state department. The research will encompass individual, team and organizational impact.
Thomas Hanson, JD is spending his six-month sabbatical becoming a Certified Christian Conciliator™ so he can provide consulting, conflict coaching, mediation, arbitration, case administration and intervention services within the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. His training will be conducted in various parts of the country by Peacemaker® Ministries, an international ministry that equips Lutherans and their churches for living, proclaiming, and cultivating lifestyles of reconciliation. As part of the training process, Hanson will provide supervised congregation reconciliation for at least five churches and then five more unsupervised reconciliations. He will need to complete 20 hours of continuing education each year after the certification. Post-certification, Hanson can be called upon by LCMS congregations when conflict resolution services are needed.
“During my sabbatical the biblical based, advanced, specialized training and work with congregations will help me bring an enlightened view of how to handle disputes to my students,” said Hanson.
Dr. Miriam Luebke will research higher education’s best and most current practices for the improved retention of students. She will study factors contributing to attrition and retention specifically at Concordia. With her research through books, articles and conferences, she will develop a plan for student retention at Concordia that fits the mission and goals focusing on the first-year and transfer experience as well as academic and financial support. When she returns from her six-month sabbatical in June 2009, she will purpose the plan for possible implementation by the University.
Dr. Thomas Saylor is spending much of the 2008-09 academic year in Germany, conducting interviews of East Germans regarding their lives before, during and after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall. He has an appointment as a research fellow at the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies at the Free University, Berlin. Saylor is capturing citizens’ thoughts and experiences regarding the large-scale economic and social transformations since the unification of Germany.
Saylor lived and worked in Germany prior to, during and after the Wall’s fall and is connecting with former colleagues and friends. “I watched as they made the sometimes painful adjustment to a capitalist society—or sometimes weren’t able to,” Saylor said. “Even then I wondered: what’s going to happen to these people? Where will they be in 20 years time?” His sabbatical will discover what he wondered 20 years ago.
Saylor’s goal is to bring these experiences to an English-speaking audience because, as he explains, “many people forgot about Germany, once the events of 1989 and 1990 faded. But for the people living there, the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification in 1990 was just the beginning of the story—not the end.”
This project is similar to two other oral history projects Saylor founded and coordinated that resulted in book publications: “Remembering the Good War” (2005) and “Long Hard Road: American POWs During World War II” (2007).
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