Year in Review (2022)

 

As 2022 comes to an end I was thinking of a word which could summarize my impression of the past 12 months of my career and one popped into my head almost immediately- exhaustion!  It was another very busy academic year.  I had deferred my winter 2022 sabbatical as the prospect of doing any travel looked precarious and I also wanted to ensure the students that had endured prolonged campus closures could enjoy some quality in-person courses when classes returned to in-person teaching last year. 

In total I taught 7 courses in the year 2022- 3 courses in the winter term, a summer course, and 3 courses again in the fall semester.  That is by far the most teaching I have ever done in my 23 years of teaching, nearly twice as many classes as the normal 4 course load.  

Despite my optimism that all the courses would be in-person, unfortunately the first half of the winter term was actually online because campus closed again when the Omicron strain appeared.  Fortunately I had already learned to manage the "online pivot" in 2020 so I was able to manage things this year, despite the additional course load.  However in the winter 2022 term I was also teaching a brand new 4th year seminar titled "The Politics of Pandemics and Epidemics".  This course covered public health ethical issues pertaining to 4 infectious diseases- malaria, HIV/AIDS, Ebola, and COVID-19- and 3 non-infectious disease predicaments- the "war on drugs", obesity and gun violence.  So teaching that course online during the Omicron wave lockdown was not the kind of "experiential learning" I wanted to explore with my students!  Nevertheless, we managed to get through it.  

Face masks remained in place until halfway through my summer course "Science and Justice".  And then in the Fall of 2022 it was the first time I lectured again to my large (300 students) class since March 2020.  Returning to large lectures, and seeing students' faces again, was a great joy.  So while an exhausting year of teaching, it was well worth it.  

I am on sabbatical this coming winter term, so I will have the opportunity to focus on more on research.  In terms of publications out this year I had two journal articles appear in print- here and here.  And most of my research was consumed writing a new textbook on the history of Western political thought.  I completed drafts of chapters on utilitarianism, feminism, Marx, Black Political Thought, conservatism.  This leaves me the last chapter on Aristotle and the Stoics, and then revisions and the conclusion.  So I hope to get this work completed on my sabbatical.

I have some other projects in mind further down the road, but they will have to wait till I have completed the current projects I am committed to.  I am looking forward to 2023!

Cheers 

Colin