Sabbatical Summaries | Provost's Office

Dr. Bekmetjev focused his fall of 2023 sabbatical leave working on an interdisciplinary research project in discrete mathematics and probability theory. He studied a probabilistic model related to the innovation and strategic network formation between individual firms. This economics model considers a group of firms that exchange ideas and intellectual property, forming in the process a communication network, an object that is formally known in discrete mathematics as a random graph. In order to assure the flow of ideas between firms, such a graph has to be connected and the problem of the probabilistic threshold of connectivity becomes one of the central considerations in the model. New technologies are often developed by combining individual findings who share the ideas and when a connected cluster of firms emerges such development becomes significantly more efficient.

This research effort was an exciting opportunity to incorporate theoretical mathematics in an applied setting. Airat was working in collaboration with Takayuki Oishi, a faculty member of the department of economics at the Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo, Japan.

Dr. Bekmetjev also developed materials for new courses in statistics and for the advanced mathematics course in combinatorics and graph theory that incorporate the most recent findings in this area of research. He applied for funding at a member institution of the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA) and participated in a workshop organized by the National Institute for Theory and Mathematics in Biology (NITMB).

Angela Carpenter spent her sabbatical finishing her second book, Grace and Social Ethics: Gift as the Foundation of Our Life Together. Drawing on Reformed theology, evolutionary anthropology and social psychology, this book depicts a vision of the human person who is thoroughly constituted by grace. While Christians sometimes worry that grace undermines ethics, particularly a robust social ethic, Carpenter argues that human dependence on gift — the gifts of God and of each other — calls for a particular vision of human flourishing and an accompanying social ethic. The first part of the book sketches a Christian anthropology of grace and the second part considers the implications of this anthropology for human work, criminal justice and gun violence.

Dr. Jane Finn began diving into her new research topic on secondary compassion fatigue for pre-service teachers. Compassion fatigue shows through emotional and physical exhaustion resulting from the constant demands of working with individuals who are exceptional or who are experiencing trauma. This multifaceted study aims to recommend and guide teacher preparation institutions to help prepare future teachers for this challenging field. During this sabbatical, Dr. Finn updated her research review, gathered new data using a reliable and valid instrument, and analyzed qualitative and quantitative data. She has started disseminating her work and will present at a national conference in March 2024. Applications for two other peer presentations (one for an international conference and one for a state conference) have been submitted. Dr. Finn has finished an article and is currently writing another article, while discussing a possible book opportunity.

On the personal side, she had a goal of doing yoga and walking four miles every other day. She loved spending time with her grandchildren — Charlie (1 year) and Amelia (6 months), and she also was able to travel to Europe with her husband and friends. She is truly blessed and grateful for the time and space that Hope College allowed her to work on this new research project.

Dr. Han spent one of the busiest summers in his recent memory in the summer 2023, visiting three different countries and engaging in many fruitful meetings. It started with his trip to Japan as one of the two Japan May Term faculty leaders. It was his first time doing it although he took over the leadership of the program four years earlier. The Covid pandemic had hampered the program. He was finally able to meet the colleagues at Meiji Gakuin University with whom he had only communicated via emails previously. The student and faculty group made wonderful memories traveling through seven historic cities. He then flew to Taiwan to join his Hope College colleague Dr. Gloria Tseng of the history department for their documentary project. Their preliminary research and scouting schedule involved visits to two universities, five major cities, and, most significantly, one of Taiwan’s aboriginal tribes living in the surprisingly high mountains of the small island country. During his next stop in South Korea, he did what he usually does when visiting his old towns and cities where he grew up and became a media professional. He conducted many interviews with his former colleagues in the industry for his research on journalistic authority in the era of online journalism and pseudo journalistic outlets that have plagued the internet. He sure was pleased to be with his parents. He committed his time in the fall months to reading and writing. He kept working on two writing projects of influencer journalism on news portals and combative political channels on YouTube. He also worked on a book proposal, focused on documentary storytelling, that got started in the spring. His emails and writing proposals continued for the Taiwan documentary project as he plans to apply for multiple production grants in the coming months.