Five Colorado College professors – who between them have more than 165 years of teaching and scholarship — retired at the end of the 2016-17 academic year. Here are their plans for retirement:

Nate Bower: Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry (started at CC in 1977)

Ultimately (God willing), I’d like to try some of the things I’ve read about but never really got to do: time travel, explore a parallel universe, find intimacy. But those may have to stay on the backburner until opportunity knocks. Until then I suppose I will try to do the usual catch up on some (okay, a LOT) of my deferred maintenance, throw out a ton of paper, paint some pictures, complete research projects, visit countries I’ve missed, and maybe write a futuristic forensic mystery novel. I hasten to add, however, that I spent my sabbaticals exploring alternative careers. I found I loved teaching more than anything else. Thus, the momentum of my personal train is going to be very hard to switch onto a new life track, especially as we all pick up speed on the downhill side (to paraphrase Charles Schulz).

Tom Cronin: Professor of Political Science (started at CC in 1986, acting president of CC in 1991, president of Whitman College 1993-2005, returned to CC in 2005)

I plan to do more writing, some teaching, more tennis, volunteering, and politics. More music, art, and hiking. With great gratitude for 56 years of teaching and scholarship at Colorado College and elsewhere. When Vincent Carroll, former director of the editorial page at The Denver Post retired last year, he said “Tom and Bob (Loevy) are walking encyclopedias of knowledge concerning state and presidential politics,as well as a pleasure to work with for journalists. They provide very readable copy — no dense academese — that includes rich insights and context that gets below the surface of events. I’ll miss handling their columns.” (Cronin and Loevy were frequent co-authors of opinion and perspective pieces.)

John Simons: Professor of English (started at CC in 1971)

In addition to spending more time with my family, I plan on continuing my scholarly life, working with my University of Chicago grad friend and often co-author Robert Merrill. We’re near completion of our second book, this one titled “Marlowe’s Cat: Raymond Chandler’s ‘The Long Goodbye’ From Novel to Screenplay to Robert Altman’s Film.” Merrill and I are simultaneously working on a much shorter book on Chandler’s first and best novel, “The Big Sleep,” and its extraordinary metamorphosis into Howard Hawks’ “The Big Sleep.” Since our first book on Sam Peckinpah, Merrill and I have been leading a (writer’s) life of crime, with essays on “Mystic River” and “Double Indemnity” preceding the larger Altman and Hawks projects. I’ll be teaching several courses next year on “Hemingway, O’Connor, and Carver and the Modern American Short Story,” as well as a half block on Terrence Malick, whose “Days of Heaven” I lectured on this spring for the Film and Media Studies program, as well as the Colorado Springs community. Lastly, I’ll be teaching a course on film history and theory in the second semester. Retiring but still stirring some embers!

Fred Tinsley: Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science (started at CC in 1977)

Barbara Whitten: Professor of Physics (started at CC in 1978)

I hesitate to say anything about this because I am not sure — I have no idea what it will be like to no longer get up and go to class every morning. Here are some ideas of what I think I might do:

• Travel — I have a list of places I’d like to see, and will start working on the list.
• Research — I am working on several research projects that I am planning to finish in the next couple of years.
• Spend time with my mother, my children, and my friends. 
• Lie on the couch reading mysteries — needs no further explanation.

And, I plan to stay in Colorado Springs, at least for the foreseeable future.