Bethel Pro­fes­sor Tells Sab­bat­i­cal Story

MISHAWAKA—On Fri­day, March 22, Dr. Eliz­a­beth McLaugh­lin, as­so­ci­ate pro­fes­sor of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, shared her sab­bat­i­cal story. She was orig­i­nally sched­uled to speak on Feb­ru­ary 1 but chose to post-pone the event due to the un­usu­ally frigid tem­per­a­tures sweep­ing through the re­gion at that time.

McLaugh­lin took her sab­bat­i­cal in the fall of 2017. She be­gan by talk­ing about her ex­pec­ta­tions for the sab­bat­i­cal, then ex­plained the re­al­ity of what hap­pened and con­cluded by re­flect­ing on God’s grace. 

McLaugh­lin said that go­ing into the sab­bat­i­cal, she ex­pected to spend time rest­ing and re­lax­ing and planned to catch up on what she felt were “schol­arly du­ties.”

How­ever, the re­al­ity was that, due to many un­ex­pected fac­tors, she had lit­tle to no time alone. She was also suf­fer­ing from ex­haus­tion. 

“I had a lot of drive,” said McLaugh­lin, “I had a lot of goals for this; but I did­n’t have a lot of gas.” 

Yet, de­spite the dif­fi­cul­ties, McLaugh­lin saw God’s grace in many in­stances, in­clud­ing a va­ca­tion to Col­orado with her hus­band. One of the great­est bless­ings that came here at home was when she re­ceived per­mis­sion to use a small of­fice at St. Mary’s Col­lege as a pri­vate space to get some  work done.

“In talk­ing about the work of the sab­bat­i­cal, I had some orig­i­nal plans,” said McLaugh­lin. 

McLaugh­lin wanted to write a book; orig­i­nally, she planned to write about “how the im­age of God en­hances teach­ing and learn­ing in com­mu­ni­ca­tion class­rooms”; but it seems that God had other  plans. 

McLaugh­lin ended up chang­ing her fo­cus to writ­ing a book for a se­ries by the Pe­ter Lang Pub­lish­ing Group called “Speak­ing of Re­li­gion.” 

McLaugh­lin said her book pro­posal was ac­cepted in Oc­to­ber of 2017, her first draft was fin­ished in De­cem­ber of 2017, the fi­nal draft com­pleted in April of 2018, and af­ter go­ing through the edit­ing process it was fi­nally pub­lished in Jan­u­ary of 2019 un­der the ti­tle, “Wom­en’s Voices of Duty and Des­tiny: Re­li­gious Speeches Tran­scend­ing Gen­der.”

Dur­ing the pub­li­ca­tion process, McLaugh­lin re­ceived as­sis­tance from other Bethel con­nec­tions, in­clud­ing Megan Clab­bers, a 2003 grad­u­ate who helped McLaugh­lin with copy edit­ing, and Maria Vi­dal, who grad­u­ated in De­cem­ber 2018 and de­signed the cover for the book.

As part of her pre­sen­ta­tion, McLaugh­lin re­quested that Ja­clyn Holmes and Ar­i­ana Jones, two cur­rent Bethel stu­dents, do a read­ing from the book. They read the sec­tion con­tain­ing Mary McLeod Bethune’s “This is What Amer­i­can Democ­racy Means to Me” speech.

McLaugh­lin went on to dis­cuss some of the copy­right night­mares she en­dured, most of which were suc­cess­fully re­solved, though she was un­able to ob­tain per­mis­sion to use a speech by Malala Yousafzai. This greatly dis­ap­pointed her, be­cause she wanted to in­clude a Mus­lim voice in the text.

McLaugh­lin con­cluded her speech by look­ing back in grate­ful­ness for the many ways God worked every­thing out.  

“Our lives are re­ally in the hands of God,” said McLaugh­lin, “and this re­ally is a won­der­ful sea­son.” 

To learn more about her book, visit www.pe­ter­lang.com.