Professors plan to retire at end of the semester

The conclusion of the academic year means the end of CSB+SJU graduating seniors’ time at the schools. At the same time, another part of the colleges’ community is set to say their goodbyes, as faculty with much more than four years of CSB+SJU experience prepare to retire.

In total, 16 professors plan to retire at the end of the spring semester, including five members of the theology department. Additionally, some professors are retiring from departments that are either closing or shrinking due to program cuts from last year’s Academic Program Prioritization (APP) process.

One faculty member, Kaarin Johnston, is leaving the theater department after 39 years of teaching at CSB+SJU. The theater major is closing at the end of this school year.

During her time at the colleges, she has taught theater history and foundations classes along with directing campus theater productions year after year.

Johnston said she wants to continue teaching at CSB+SJU, but the loss of the theater major coupled with administrative plans to decrease department size accelerated her retirement.

“There’s only one other tenured person in theater, so it’s better this way,” Johnston said. “[The other professors] have a chance to stay longer.”

As part of the APP process, the schools offered some faculty incentivized retirement options. Johnston said these faculty were notified of this in an email that listed qualifying faculty and their ages.

When Johnston came to CSB+SJU, she said she was drawn by previous experience working with CSB+SJU students. She was also impressed by how the sisters of St. Benedict’s Monastery ran CSB when she arrived.

“I think I was very fortunate to come here at a time when there were so many monastics teaching with my background of no older women role models,” Johnston said. “That is something a lot of new teachers don’t have, but that was a real blessing for me.”

Johnston said one of her favorite courses to teach was foundations because it allowed her to create an interest in theater for first-years who might not have been interested in it before the course began.

“[Theater] helps us look at life in a different way,” Johnston said. “It helps people feel things and be able to identify with things that are different from them. And for me, you can’t separate theater from history. It’s a way to help people be able to talk about things that are hard to talk about.”

Another department affected by APP is peace studies, which will be entirely eliminated at the end of this academic year. Its department chair, Jeff Anderson, is among this year’s faculty retirees.

Anderson graduated from SJU in 1986 with a degree in biology before going on to earn a doctorate in international relations from the University of Minnesota. He said his experience at CSB+SJU prepared him for a switch from science to politics.

“I think what St. John’s and St. Ben’s gave me is the idea that multiple perspectives are valued, and [my doctorate] wouldn’t have been a better program if we had all majored in international relations,” Anderson said.

Anderson returned to teach at CSB+SJU in 1992. He taught classes in a variety of subjects related to peace studies, including global environmental politics. Over the past couple years, he has been one of the professors in the new global health minor.

For him, being in the classroom sharing his knowledge and conversations with students has been incredibly important.

“I think [what I’ll miss most] would be the conversations with students who discover an interest that they never knew they had, and then trying to figure out how to foster that and support it, without a doubt,” Anderson said.

The theology department, despite avoiding direct impact from APP, is also set to undergo significant turnover with five faculty retiring. Retiring members of the theology department include Vincent Smiles, Charles Bobertz, Kathleen Cahalan, John Merkle and Rev. Michael Patella.

Smiles has taught at CSB+SJU since 1992, with his area of study primarily focusing on the Letters of St. Paul. He earned his master’s degree from the School of Theology at SJU, which made him excited to return to campus to teach.

“I already knew I loved these colleges, so when I got the opportunity to come here, I was delighted by the opportunity,” Smiles said.

Smiles plans to devote more time to writing in retirement, including focusing on authoring a book titled “From the Discussions of Science to the Contemplation of God.” However, he said it will be challenging to let go of teaching after years of experience.

“I love these colleges,” Smiles said. “It was easy to continue to be here. The more I was here, the more I enjoyed being here. The learning atmosphere of students and their faculty colleagues were the things which kept me enthusiastic.”

CSB junior theology major Maddie Lenius has taken two classes with Smiles while at CSB+SJU. She spoke about Smiles’s ability to get students to think about their faith.

“He encourages students to grapple with their own relationship with certain ideas and to take responsibility of their own theology and how they see God in the world and the texts,” Lenius said. “Definitely a lot of what makes him stand out as a professor is teaching students how to grapple with those big questions.”

Smiles said the theology department has hired two new faculty members for next year. The remaining members of the department will fill in to teach any other leftover classes.

Outside of Johnston, Anderson and the retiring theology faculty, other departing professors include Jeanne Cook in communication, Tony Cunningham in philosophy, Dan Finn in economics, Mary Jepperson in accounting and finance, Brian Johnson in chemistry, Michael Livingston in psychology, Marina Martin in Hispanic studies, Madhu Mitra in English and Michael Reagan in biology.

Among all these retirements, it appears that these faculty members share one thing in common: dedication to their students.

“I said quite a long time ago that I made students my boss, in terms of my primary concern of, ‘What are they thinking?’” Anderson said. “They’re the reason why I’m here, and I think a lot of faculty members share that.”