Dr. Jeremy Strickler used his fall 2025 professional development leave to advance research on presidential leadership and drug policy, co-author a chapter on camping and develop a course on American political culture. Photo by Angela Foster.
Sabbatical Spotlight explores the meaningful and innovative work University of Tennessee at Chattanooga faculty members undertake during professional development leave. The series also illustrates how leave can advance scholarly, creative, teaching and professional work.
Professional development leave is an investment UTC makes in its faculty and, through them, in the students, colleagues and communities they serve. Faculty considering an application should act now. The deadline is Oct. 31.
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A government shutdown, a campfire and the myths that divide us.
Dr. Jeremy Strickler’s professional development leave showed that scholarship can move forward when plans change and curiosity leads the way.
Strickler, an associate professor of political science and UTC faculty member since 2016, used his fall 2025 leave to advance research on presidential leadership and U.S. drug control policy, co-author a book chapter about camping, and develop a new course on American political culture.
The projects look different on paper, but each grew from questions that have long shaped his teaching and research: how institutions influence public life, how people make meaning together and how ideas become action.
His research on drug policy began with a familiar subject in his classes: the war on drugs. Trained in the politics of the American presidency, Strickler wanted to examine how presidents have framed drug use as a criminal matter rather than a public health issue.
“The presidency is a very important political institution for doing multiple things with the politics of drug policy,” he said. “One is, given the president’s position as what we call the bully pulpit, they can frame what the drug problem is in this country.”
Strickler planned to conduct archival research at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum in Little Rock, Arkansas. A government shutdown, however, meant the library was inaccessible during his planned visit.
He adjusted by returning to books, primary-source material available online, and scholarship on public policy and the presidency. The change helped him further refine the theoretical contribution of his work, which considers how the war on drugs became a national security issue and how that framing can shape the policy options available to presidents.
“It did sort of sharpen my chops a bit on what’s the real bite theoretically,” he said, “and what’s the main takeaway?”
In June, he presented the work at the Conference on American Political Development at Smith College in Massachusetts.
“What I was most excited to share with my colleagues was that scholars of American political development can make a great contribution by having dialogues with scholars of international relations,” Strickler said. “The war on drugs is just one small example of what it looks like to securitize an issue.”
The project remains in progress, with archival research still part of his plan.
Dr. Jeremy Strickler is an associate professor of political science at UTC.
Professional development leave also gave Strickler time to pursue a very different collaboration with his wife, Dr. Lucy Schultz, assistant professor of philosophy and co-director of UTC’s Environmental Studies program. Together, they wrote “Camping and the Public Good,” a chapter for the forthcoming edited volume “Camping and Philosophy: Big Ideas in the Great Outdoors,” to be published by Milestone Press.
The chapter considers camping on public lands through the ideas of philosopher John Dewey, whose work on democracy emphasizes learning and experience with others. For Strickler and Schultz, a public campground is a shared space where people encounter neighbors, public resources and the natural environment.
“We all have the right to access this public land,” Strickler said. “That itself is a democratic good.”
Their own camping trips helped generate questions for the chapter, from the social rules that develop among neighboring campsites to practical matters such as recycling and care for public spaces.
“A public campground can bring together people who otherwise might not meet,” he said, “and those experiences can shape how campers think about their obligations to one another and to the land they share.”
The third part of Strickler’s leave was building a course, “Myth and Meaning in American Political Culture,” which he taught during the summer semester. The course examined the stories Americans tell about the nation, including the founding, the Civil War and the frontier, and how those stories continue to shape political debate.
Strickler said the course was not intended to declare one interpretation right and another wrong. Instead, it gave students a framework for recognizing that people may hold fundamentally different understandings of what it means to be American.
Students engaged closely with readings and difficult questions, he said, including whether the Civil War was about slavery and how the frontier involved both economic development and the removal of Indigenous populations.
“I went in there letting them know very clearly that these are going to be issues that I don’t find controversial. These are issues we have to grapple with,” he said.
For Strickler, professional development leave provided sustained time to follow those questions, complete projects and return to the classroom with new material and energy.
He encourages colleagues considering leave to apply, noting that most already have work they would pursue with dedicated time.
“All of us already have projects in mind,” Strickler said. “We have stacks of books on our desks that we say we’ll finally get around to reading because they’re going to be important for our next research project. So there’s no reason not to apply.”
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Department of Political Science and Public Service
