October 15, 2007
Lyon College News Bureau

Professor’s sabbatical offered
‘once in a lifetime opportunity’

Dr. Scott Roulier’s recent sabbatical to New Zealand gave him the chance to study urban design and sustainability issues in a setting he had long wanted to visit, and to share the “once in a lifetime opportunity” with his family.

Roulier will be installed as the John D. Trimble Associate Professor of Political Philosophy at the Founders' Day convocation Oct. 20. He joined the Lyon faculty in 2000, and currently serves as faculty advisor for the Lyon Moot Court Team and the General Education Task Force.

Author of the book, “Kantian Virtue at the Intersection of Politics and Nature,” Roulier said his research focus is shifting toward the relationship between environmental issues and how they relate to democratic theory.

While there, he served as visiting scholar at Massey University in the city of Palmerston North, on the North Island of New Zealand.

The name “New Zealand” originated with Dutch cartographers, who called the islands “Nova Zeelandia,” after the Dutch province of Zeeland. British explorer James Cook subsequently adapted the name to its current form.

An acquaintance in the Environmental Planning department at Massey University encouraged Roulier to choose New Zealand as the locale for his Sabbatical.

“I gave lectures on such topics as environmental economics, environmental ethics and planning theory,” he said. “On the South Island, I delivered a paper on sustainability.”

Roulier also completed a draft of an academic article while at Massey.

He went over in February, and his wife and two sons followed in March. Roulier took his family on an eco-tour that exposed them to yellow-eyed penguins, sea lions, a seal colony, royal albatrosses and many other native species.

A hike near Tongariro even took them up a mountain that was depicted as the fictional volcano where the Dark Lord Sauron forged the famous gold band in The Lord of Rings.

“They got to hike up Mount Doom,” Roulier said.

The family also spent time in Australia during their stay, and on the long journey home, they took a route around the Pacific Rim that led them through Thailand, China and Japan.

“It was a once in a lifetime opportunity to have us all together for a trip like that,” Roulier said. “By the time my next Sabbatical comes around, the kids will be grown.”

Their excursion through China tied in well with Roulier’s work in environmental design, as well as his background in political science.

“All the industrial plants made the air hazy and thick almost everywhere we went,” he said. “The ecologic destruction they’re dealing with is significant.”

That contrasted sharply with the environmentally friendly design of Palmerston North, where the Roulier family lived during their stay in New Zealand.

“We lived in a house on a river, and there were mountain bike trails everywhere that were well marked and paved,” he said. “It was nice to be able to throw a laptop in my backpack and ride anywhere in a city with a population of about 80,000. Their lifestyle there is wonderful.”

Consequently, obesity is rare in New Zealand because so many residents walk or bike wherever they go, Roulier added.

The type of infrastructure that makes that lifestyle possible would work equally well in a city like Batesville.

“It’s part of an effective green urban design,” he said. “Even in a nice, small city like Batesville, biking across streets like Harrison and Saint Louis is dangerous for children to attempt on foot or on bike. Investing in that kind of infrastructure here would make that lifestyle possible – and safe.”

In 2005, Roulier was named the CASE/Carnegie Foundation Arkansas Professor of the Year, and was honored with Lyon College’s Lamar Williamson Prize for Faculty Excellence for 2004-05. He was Lyon’s Alpha Chi Professor of the Year for 2002-03.

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Dr. Scott Roulier hikes across a mountain near Tongariro in New Zealand during his recent Sabbatical there. The mountain was used as the setting for Mount Doom in the "Lord of the Rings" movies.

Dr. Roulier