By the time the school year ends, students can answer questions regarding their summer plans in an almost automatic manner. But on the same college campus, awareness of the plans of faculty and staff for the upcoming summer is not so natural.
Political Science Department Chair Vickie Sullivan will be teaching a summer course, but will be far from campus: "I'm teaching a class on Rousseau this summer in Talloires," Sullivan said. "I'm really starting to get excited about the class. We have a very good enrollment of about 15 students."
Sullivan said she is looking forward to the unique teaching atmosphere of the Tufts-in-Talloires program. "We will be having intensive discussions in a private setting for two-hour blocks," she said.
Having spent this semester teaching statistics and econometrics, Associate Economics Professor Tom Downes is dedicating his summer to several different projects. First on his list: a study he is doing on the changing role private schools play on educational provisions in the United States. He is examining how changes in the private sector affect public education.
Incorporating both teaching and research, Sociology Professor Paul Joseph will teach a course on the sociology of war and peace for the first Tufts summer session, as well as finishing a book, which will be published in the year to come.
Joseph said he appreciates the relaxed atmosphere of summer courses. "The classes are nice - smaller and more relaxed," he said. "There's a better opportunity to get to know students. The learning atmosphere is different."
The athletic realm of Tufts also remains active during the summer months. "We don't do it for the money," Football Defense Coordinator John Walsh said. "If you're a coach, it's a year-round job."
During the summer, the football coaches travel to football camps and clinics in June and July, visiting clinics at Notre Dame and Yale to search for recruits. The summer is the time to also work on the team's playbooks, meet with other coaches, and reflect on the old season as well as the one to come.
"It's why we do it: the experience of watching kids succeed on the field, the classroom ... they grow; it's priceless," Walsh said.
Softball Coach Cheryl Milligan is attending a scheduled recruiting weekend and the summer softball season games in hopes of finding new Jumbos for the team. "It's a lot of work, but it's fun," Milligan said.
Apart from traditional recruiting events, Milligan takes time to continually improve her own game by playing with the North American Women's Baseball League during the summer months. There are four teams from Lynn, Mass. in the league, and Milligan will travel with the all-star team. She says that playing during the summer allows her to try out new stances or pitches, and to bring those lessons back to her players at Tufts.
An engineering professor planning on having an intense summer fitness experience? Not exactly congruent with stereotypes. But in addition to training for a bike tour that he has been doing with his wife for 22 years, Associate Computer Science Professor Alva Couch is mentoring three students, writing a chapter in the Elseviev System Administration Handbook on configuration management, and attending several conferences. He also has a speaking engagement at the International Conference on Automatic Computing in Seattle, Wash.
"One of the benefits of being a professor is a relatively unstructured summer schedule," Couch said. "I take advantage of that with a good two-hour bike ride a day and a 600-mile unsupported bike tour at the end of summer."
Couch's fellow Computer Science Associate Professor Rob Jacob is setting up a small summer research group comprised of two graduate students and one undergraduate with the goal of identifying the next generation of user interfaces after desktops.
Their hypothesis? The future user interface will be increasingly based on reality. "We don't know quite where to start," Jacob said. "We have a theory and will meet and simply say, 'Let's all just think.'"
Chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Mohammed Afsar will be continuing research funded by the U.S. Army and Navy. Seven sophomores are involved in this research, which will measure the resonance frequencies of 12 different common substances, such as sugar, salt, glucose and lactose.
"Identifying materials based on their resonance frequencies is really important in determining whether the material is present inside baggage," Afsar said. "One can find out what's inside without scaring the public."
By involving younger students in the research, Afsar said she hopes that they will become proficient in the research and become "key for future research at Tufts."
Not all engineering professors choose to conduct federally funded research. Electrical Engineering Lecturer Paul McCormack will be "developing the next generation of integrated circuits for cell phones" at Bitwave Semiconductor in Lowell, Mass.
Referring to his choice to work in industry during the summer, McCormick said it allows him to "bring back the knowledge into the classroom, the new skills."
Chris Rogers, a mechanical engineering professor and the director of the Center for Engineering Education Outreach, is continually - in his words - "playing with Lego bricks for a living."
Rogers does research on Steinway pianos, studies obesity in fruit flies, is building Lego underwater robots and building inventions with teachers in New Zealand over the Internet, as well as researching for Intel on how to make better computer chips.
Such ambitious summer engagements do not finish with retirement. Mechanical Engineering Professor Emeritus John Kreifeldt teaches in Taiwan and travels in Borneo throughout the summer - and his travels have resulted in the development of a side interest: textiles.
"I've been collecting textiles from Borneo and Indonesia for years and now have a piece in the American Textile History Museum in Lowell," he said. "I'm scheduled to give a talk at the MFA [Museum of Fine Arts] next February on these textiles."
Assistant Mathematics Professor Misha Kilmer has hired two undergraduate researchers who will work with her on a project involving medical image processing.
"I definitely have several conferences this summer," said Kilmer, adding in jest, "You'll probably do the professors a favor implying we do have a real social life outside of school!"
Indeed, Kilmer is spending a portion of her summer going to Antigua with her husband for their 10-year anniversary. Her sister is also coming on the trip with her husband, celebrating their fifth anniversary.
In the end, therefore, the term "summer" does not completely lose its complete "fun-in-the-sun" meaning for professors. As Joseph said, "I'm taking a vacation too, don't worry about that."
