Anushka Bansal

Professor Linda Ginzel in her office in Booth Harper Center.

Observing the cosmos through a telescope in Chile. Feeling the electric spark of a well-reasoned philosophical disagreement in a classroom. Reading manuscripts and refining literary technique in a poetry seminar. Facilitating reflective leadership in a horseshoe-shaped business classroom.

At UChicago, students and faculty alike have historically valued the ideal of learning for learning’s sake, but what do professors’ lives of the mind look like?

The Maroon interviewed faculty across departments and levels to glimpse the rhythms of their days, exploring what they find rewarding, how they navigate the demands of their job, and what sustains their intellectual passions.

Professors’ lives at the University are intertwined with the demands of teaching, research, and service. In an interview with the Maroon, associate professor Timothy Harrison of the Department of English Language and Literature spoke about how he has come to appreciate the University’s unusually collaborative culture.

“The students are amazing, smart, dedicated… [and] they come eager to talk,” he said. “What makes it really great to be here as an academic is that degree to which… colleagues are eager to discuss your ideas, read your work, critique you, make suggestions.  People are in the business of making each other better in a communal and collaborative way.”

Harrison, who is also affiliated with the Divinity School and the Committee on Social Thought, has been at the University for 11 years. Since 2020, he has served as the Resident Dean of Woodlawn Residential Commons West, a role he finds both “rewarding and fun.”

“Eating with the students all the time, having them in your house all the time for a study break, I mean you really get to know people very, very well and you get to know about the academic and personal ecology of their lives—how complicated they are,” Harrison explained.

For some professors, this collaborative nature of academic life means that the lines between professional and personal spheres often blur. Linda Ginzel, Clinical Professor of Managerial Psychology at the Booth School of Business since 1992, sees her work and personal life as deeply intertwined. “I don’t separate them,” she says. “I work at home and do home at work—my friends are my colleagues, and my colleagues are my friends.”

Ginzel attributes much of this fluidity to the autonomy her position affords. She likens this freedom to “feel[ing] like an entrepreneur.” She tracks her long days of teaching and community building meticulously in her calendar, and values being able to shape her own time. “Academics can work any 80 hours they choose,” she said, quoting a colleague.

A similar sense of constant immersion in academia is present in the life of Benjamin Callard, an instructional professor in the Department of Philosophy who has been at the University for 17 years. Callard is inspired by those who seek to understand “how we should be living and what this world is all about.”

“That’s what I do all day,” he said. “I spend the day arguing—with students, colleagues, total strangers.” For him, open dialogue is “the heart of philosophy.”

Callard’s office, a messy room he describes with self-deprecating humor, offers a glimpse into his life and mind as a philosopher. When asked about the space, he joked: “I think you shouldn’t ask me that question. I think you need to ask a psychiatrist or something.” Gesturing around the room, he points to what his students have dubbed his “vision boards,” plastered across the walls. For Callard, these are “things that meant something to [him] at some point,” serving as reminders of the ideas and ideals that drive his thinking.

Intellectual rigor isn’t exclusive to the humanities and social sciences. Michael Gladders is a professor in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics whose curiosity is on a cosmic scale. His work takes him to observatories around the world, far from the confines of a conventional nine-to-five. “Some days, I work two full days in one,” he says, for example, when he is observing on a telescope in Chile for 18 hours. “Other days, I just need to sleep a day to reset.”

Even with his unpredictable schedule, Gladders’s fascination with the universe is rooted in focused inquiry. “I am a sort of hardcore observational astronomer and being at the telescope is my happy place,” he said. When asked about what he finds most rewarding about his job, he explained, “That moment when you first download the data, where it has just come off the satellite and through the relay network and onto a computer, and you’re the first person to see it, is magical for me—that discovery aspect.”

Outside of these moments of cosmic discovery, he spends his leisure time listening to music, collecting art, and playing video games. A recipient of the prestigious Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, Gladders exemplifies how play, wonder, and rigor can live side by side in a professor’s life.

The demands of faculty life extend well beyond research. Teaching, too, says Gladders, requires continuous preparation and intention. “If a course is too easy, students have no agency; if it’s too hard, they lose hope.” His goal is to find the “sweet spot” where students are challenged but not overwhelmed.

Harrison focuses on “re-reading everything I am teaching—even if I’ve read it a hundred times—so that I can walk into class over‑prepared and teach extemporaneously.” He aims to foster a classroom environment that feels “magical,” where students actively engage with ideas, and everyone leaves having gained a new perspective.

Across the Midway, Professor Srikanth “Chicu” Reddy is a poet and literary editor who has taught at the University since 2003. “I think a lot of what I do is improvisatory as a teacher,” he said. His courses often grow out of his own evolving interests as a writer and the world around him.

Reddy’s office, like Callard’s, reflects this creative flux. “People deserve to know,” he said, glancing at his office’s unsettled state. When asked about a typical day in his life, he explained, “there is no one ‘day in the life’—it’s just trying to have that day in the life that you always wanted to have.”

“If you can have one of those once in a while, you’re probably doing the right thing and headed in the right direction,” he continued.

For professors, Reddy explained, moments of reward surface in unexpected times. “[It’s] in those moments when you’re alone in your office and you feel like you’ve solved a tricky little technical problem,” he said. “And that opens up a whole new set of possibilities for the poem you’re working on.”

This mental overflow speaks to the professors’ constant engagement with the life of the mind.

“Teaching is something that you do with your full person,” Harrison said. “The sort of teacher you are, or the sort of scholar you are, is an immediate expression of the sort of person you are. The question of being an academic isn’t a what question; it’s a who question.”