Images of retirement are ubiquitous, virtually iconic: A gray-haired couple enjoys the amenities of a resort or foreign city, the pleasures of an ocean cruise, or an elegant restaurant meal. These images purportedly reflect the relaxation and easy lifestyle associated with the word "retirement."
But academics, unlike many other professionals, are just as likely to continue the intellectual work of their employed years after they reach emeritus status&emdash;the term that typically signifies "retired" in the collegiate world. While travel, favored hobbies, and volunteer work have their place in the lives of Swarthmore's emeriti, few of your favorite professors are sitting back with their feet up. Most are busy conducting research, writing and editing, and a few are even teaching.
For the College, says Provost Jennie Keith, the scholarly work of the emeriti faculty has enduring importance, both internally and externally. "It enhances our reputation and visibility, since our very productive retired scholars continue to be identified with Swarthmore. Internally it provides important models for our current faculty, a reminder of the significance and richness of the scholarly life."
Based on past rates of early retirement, Keith projects a significant number of new emeriti in the next two decades. The College's early retirement plan offers tenured faculty who have been full-time members for at least 10 years the chance to fully retire before the age of 70. In addition to a financial incentive, for a period of up to five years the retiree is offered continuing tuition benefits for dependent children, research support, travel allowances for learned society meetings, library privileges, secretarial help, and when available, office space.
Keith sees the program as a mechanism that benefits both the College and the retiree. For individual departments it facilitates long-range planning. For faculty members it encourages thoughtful preparation for the years ahead at a time when they are still very active. A gerontologist by training, Keith brings professional expertise to her view of early retirement. "It offers participants a reason to plan, to gauge their options, and to avoid making hasty moves they might come to regret. For many people," Keith says, "the continuity makes sense."
With the commitment to teaching that is so integral to Swarthmore's professional ethos, it might be expected that professors would miss this vital part of their work once it ceases. Yet an informal survey suggests this is not often the case. Some have continued to teach part time in the first years of retirement, while others have embraced volunteer teaching (Paul Mangelsdorf '49, the Morris L. Clothier Professor Emeritus of Physics, and Alburt Rosenberg, associate professor emeritus of natural science).
As Jean Ashmead Perkins '49, the Susan W. Lippincott Professor Emerita of French, puts it: "Retirement affords the opportunity to develop [your] scholarly, professional, and personal life in a way that is no longer constrained by the college calendar and student needs." Perkins has published reviews and articles and given papers nearly every year since her 1990 retirement, and she has continued her professional associations with the Modern Language Association and American Society for 18th-Century Studies.
Her view is echoed by Linwood Urban, the Charles and Harriett Cox McDowell Professor Emeritus of Religion. "I loved teaching while I was doing it but do not miss it," said Urban. "I am enjoying a change of pace." Urban published a second edition of his book A Short History of Christian Thought and is at work on another. In addition he serves as dean of the Delaware Deanery of the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania, where he provides support for the clergy of 16 congregations.
Martin Ostwald, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor Emeritus of Classics, has "no regrets whatever, because I can devote myself entirely to research and writing. My desire to teach is satisfied by four weeks each spring giving a seminar at Tel Aviv University." Ostwald has published five papers since his retirement in 1992 and has others in press. He was appointed a delegate of the American Philological Association to the American Council of Learned Societies and was awarded an honorary degree in 1995 by the University of Fribourg. He says, "I am grateful to [the] College for the amenities they afford me, especially a study in the library, photocopying, telephoning, secretarial services, and e-mail."
Helen North, the Centennial Professor Emerita of Classics, continues her research on Plato's rhetoric and the cults of Hestia and Vesta in Greek and Roman religion, politics, art, and literature, and she has published articles in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society and other publications and various festschrifts. She also contributes reviews to classical journals. Said North, "Retirement has given me more time to devote to several organizations with which I've had a long connection, The American Council of Learned Societies and the American Philological Association, Phi Beta Kappa, and the American Academy in Rome."
North and her sister Mary are frequent travelers to Italy and Ireland, where they enjoy visiting gardens and megalithic sites. In addition North has led Alumni College Abroad trips to the Rhine&endash;Mosel and to Turkey, and for a private travel firm to the Black Sea and to Syria and Jordan. She has found that her travels sometimes provide inspiration for writing.
David Smith, the Richter Professor Emeritus of Political Science, retired in 1992&emdash;well, almost. He continued to teach a course in health policy until last year and said the biggest surprise for him has been just how busy retirement continues to be.
Smith is an active volunteer in activities relating to health policy and politics, one of his special interests and areas of research during his teaching years. He serves on the boards of the Chester Board of Health, Friends Life Care at Home, and the Child Guidance Resource Centers. He gives occasional public lectures and participates on panels dealing with health care, and he frequently writes on the subject. With Chuck Gilbert, professor emeritus of political science and the College's first provost, he is engaged in a project on the fate of "neutral competence" in the federal civil service. He also continued to serve the College as prelaw adviser and has "helped out a bit" with premed advising as well.
Susan Snyder, the Gil and Frank Mustin Professor Emerita of English Literature, retired in 1993 and headed to Washington, D.C., "to be near the excellent research facilities at the Folger Shakespeare Library," where last year she was named scholar-in-residence. Snyder has a book on pastoral poetry forthcoming from Stanford University Press, and she is currently at work on the Cambridge Edition of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale.
Since his 1994 retirement, George Avery, emeritus professor of German, has completed an edition of the correspondence between Herwarth Walden and Karl Kraus, 1909&endash;12, to be published in 1998. Avery is a frequent contributor of reviews on research and criticism of Kraus, his circle, and his opponents.
Harry Pagliaro, the Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor Emeritus of English Literature and College provost from 1979 to 1984, has migrated from an office in the Engineering Dept. during his first year of retirement in 1992&endash;1993, to a study in McCabe Library, to a room in Parrish basement. Through his peregrinations, Pagliaro completed two books, a literary life of Henry Fielding forthcoming from Macmillan (his teaching field was 18th-century and English romantics) and a memoir of combat in World War II, Naked Heart: A Soldier's Journey to the Front, published last year.
Says Peter Thompson, professor emeritus of chemistry, "I still come in to the College daily to pursue research in the area of computational chemistry. And I help out a little in the physical chemistry lab and enjoy that on a volunteer basis. I liked teaching but in all honesty I can't say I miss it.... Still, you become aware that you no longer really belong to the College life you lived for 40 years. So there is some nostalgia."
Thompson has taken up woodworking, a hobby he says is getting to be serious. "I always wanted to build a building by myself," Thompson says. And he has&emdash;a workshop and garden shed for the family summer home in Canada.
Mark Heald, the Morris L. Clothier Professor Emeritus of Physics, shares a Du Pont office with colleagues Paul Mangelsdorf and Oleksa Bilaniuk, where he used a Mac Plus to produce camera-ready copy for the Solutions Manual to accompany the major revision of his textbook Classical Electromagnetic Radiation, for which he maintains a Website to provide additional references (http://www.swarthmore.edu/NatSci/mheald1/). Heald called the shared space, formerly a computation lab, "a happy situation" for the three emeriti and sufficiently large to accommodate the professional accumulations of their combined near-century of teaching.
Oleksa-Myron Bilaniuk, the Centennial Professor Emeritus of Physics and certified FAA pilot and flight instructor, has been physics editor and editorial board member for the five-volume Encyclopedia of Ukraine. He is also on the editorial board of the Ukrainian Journal of Physics and is collaborating with Ukrainian lexicographers on a 100,000-word English-Ukrainian-English Dictionary of Physics and Technology.
When psychology colleague Phil Kellman moved to UCLA, Bilaniuk sold Kellman his share of their jointly owned Cessna 182 and began flying rented aircraft. He also flies gliders. Last year near Reno, Nevada, Bilaniuk soared to 25,000 feet in an LS-4 sailplane (with oxygen mask, of course).
"The essential element of a happy retirement is to see it as a new life, not an epilogue," writes Bernard Smith, professor emeritus of history, who began retirement at the relatively early age of 60 in 1985. Born in Great Britain and educated at Oxford and Harvard, Professor Smith returned to his home turf when he moved to a tiny hamlet (population 20) in Wales.
Significantly Smith has taken his own advice and may be the only one of Swarthmore's emeriti faculty who is both retired and an undergraduate. He is working to complete a B.A. in classics at the University of Wales. More in line with his major field (medieval history) are Smith's translations of two treatises on 12th-century monastic life for the publication Oxford Medieval Texts. In addition there is gardening and furniture-making, as well as travel to France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Portugal, and Ireland. Not to mention visits from his four children and former colleagues.
"The period since retirement has been the happiest time of my life," Smith adds.
Judith Egan is a freelance writer who lives in Swarthmore.