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This is not Dusenbery’s first sabbatical. In 1999, he spent half a year researching and working with Sikhs, a religious group he has researched since his years as an undergraduate at Stanford. His first study was to look at utopian Sikh converts living in North America and research the misunderstandings of the religion they may have in comparison to Sikhs living in India.

He traveled to Vancouver, British Columbia, before traveling to Indonesia to research there in 1993. After noting a vast difference between North American and Southeast Asian views of the religion, he became intersested in other areas of the Sikh community that had not yet been written about-an interest prompting trips to Australia, Malaysia, and, just last year, India.

Last August, Dusenbery, who works with the Global Studies, International Journalism and Anthropology departments, began his year of sabbatical in India. This time around, he wanted to look into the connection he knew many Sikhs abroad kept to the Punjab region. Many practicing Sikhs outside of India keep in contact with other Sikhs in the area by sending letters, supplies and money. Dusenbery wanted to find out what they were mailing into the area, and why.

“I wanted to know, ‘Why are they sending this?’” Dusenbery said. “What are they deciding to support?” He went on to explain that many non-residential Indians decide to mail funds into India for things that are not necessarily vital to the community, such as kabaddi tournamentsčan ever-popular sport Dusenbery explains as a cross between tag and wrestling. This takes emphasis away from other things that could be improved in the region, such as education, health clinics and research. Too many people believe that India has plenty of funding for resources such as these, he says, when in reality, that is only half true. While well-off areas have the schools and hospitals they need, more rural areas are lacking.

“[India] has its outposts of excellence, but also a lot of mediocrity,” Dusenbery says of the education and health services that are far too often lacking due to the state’s corruption and lack of resources.

Dusenbery spent time observing this contrast up close; family schooling situations kept him living in New Delhi and commuting to a village of the Punjab region, home to research colleague Dr. Darshan Singh Tatla, to do his studies. Travels took him elsewhere as well, in order to deliver the numerous presentations on his work. Some of these findings will be published in a collection of his essays through Oxford University Press in 2007, tentatively titled Sikhs at Large: Religion, Culture and Politics in Global Perspective.

Other activities included co-organizing a global workshop in Jalandhar, going over Fulbright Scholar proposals and preparing students from India for time abroad in the United States before their departure.

“One of the things that was the most striking was how desperately people still want to go abroad,” Dusenbery said of Punjab.

He also spent some time representing Hamline, trekking to Bangladesh for several days to strengthen ties between Hamline and the Independent University of Bangladesh. The universities have a student exchange plan set up through Hamine’s Certificate of International Journalism program, but it has not been used as much in past years as would be hoped. Dusenbery met a student there who he feels would be very successful in the program, but since Hamline does not have a student going to Bangladesh this year, they were not able to arrange the exchange (even though Dusenbery offered room and board with his own family to try to help).

In the future, Dusenbery says he would gladly take another sabbatical. In fact, he already has an idea of what he’d like to study nextča multi-cultural look at the concepts and standards of male friendship. According to Professor Kate Bjork of the Global Studies department, sabbatical work is important not only because it helps professors gain insight that they can bring back to the classroom, but also because it can create change and generate research in the community they are embedded in.

“They can learn more about their field and also be involved in producing new knowledge,” she said, adding that field work away from campus is, “a very important part of being a good teacher.” She commended Dusenbery on helping to jump-start the Global Studies program at Hamline, saying that he was, “very early in bringing and building on this program.”

One reason Bjork feels that this is so vital is that working in global research is challenging. One has to be able to relate multiple cultures, even though he or she may be limited physically to one location. “It’s harder to get a different perspective [without sabbaticals],” she states. “A sabbatical is a time when they renew and expand their knowledge of what they’re experienced in.”

Dusenbery points out that in the Global Studies field, that can really affect a student’s time abroad-preparing them for current events and cultural expectations in the country they will be staying in, and also for the way the students themselves will be perceived differently overseas.

“The experience of cross-cultural immersion is invigorating,” Dusenbery said. “It’s good for us to go in and get our hands dirty.”

The only problem in spending sabbaticals abroad?

As Dusenbery recalls jokingly saying to former dean Garvin Davenport, “Sometimes we have such a rewarding time that it makes it hard to come back.”