By NICOLE POTTINGER – STAFF WRITER
In the morning, most married, working couples grab their bags, their coffee, and give each other a kiss before driving away for work. Yet Dr. Robert Bosco and Dr. Dina Badie as well as Dr. Amos Tubb and his wife Madame Karen Tubb never have to part ways in the driveway.
Assistant President of International Studies Dr. Robert Bosco arrived at Centre College two years before his wife, Assistant Professor of Politics and International Studies Dr. Dina Badie. After Dr. Badie finished her PhD in Political Science at the University of Connecticut, she secured a job at Centre.
When asked if she anticipated working alongside her husband, Dr. Badie explained that it is very difficult to find positions in their field and they are “incredibly lucky given the nature of academia.”
Dr. Bosco shares his wife’s sentiments regarding the luck they have both experienced in finding jobs relevant to their field of study.
“[Our working situation] couldn’t have worked out any better,” Dr. Bosco said.
Dr. Badie admited, however, that the two sometimes bring their work home with them in the form of political discussions. Such discussions eventually evolved into “Pizza and Politics,” a semi-annual event hosted by Centre’s Politics department.
Due to the debate-like format of the event, students have coined the term “Badie/Bosco Smackdown” to characterize the debate.
During these discussions, the two each defend their point of view regarding a current political issue. The most recent discussion focused on ISIS. The idea that married couples can have different points of view is one of the reasons as to why Drs. Bosco and Badie decided to have a “smackdown” in the first place.
”We hope the smackdown is an educational experience [for students],” Dr. Bosco said.
As far as seeing each other on a daily basis, the couple agreed that even though they work in the same department, they hardly see one another due to their schedules.
The two find the time to eat lunch together when they can, yet Dr. Badie believes this is a good thing, saying that their working relationship is not so “in your face” as one might think.
Despite how their schedules do not allow much time to see one another, Dr. Badie feels that her working arrangement with her husband is ultimately for the best. By not speaking constantly at work, the two are able to talk more once they come home.
A second married professor couple is Associate Professor of History and Chair of the History Program Dr. Amos Tubb and French professor Madame Karen Tubb. The two have three young children and find that their hectic schedules allow them to balance teaching and parenting, especially when it comes to coordinating schedules with the Danville school system.
Due to these schedules, they have limited interaction during the day.
Madame Tubb similarly feels that this separation that defines their working arrangement is for the best. Although she would “love to see Amos all day, every day,” their lack of work interaction gives the two “more to talk about in the evenings.” Above all, the mismatching schedules allow for them to attend to, as she puts it, “the issues [that] might come up with the children.”
Dr. Tubb started teaching at Centre in 2005 while Madame Tubb started at Danville High School teaching French. Six years later, a position opened up at Centre and Madame Tubb began teaching introductory French in the fall of 2012. The two say that they had not anticipated working at the same institution, but it was “completely by chance that it worked out.”
Both Drs. Badie and Bosco and the Tubbs acknowledge how lucky they are to be working in the same small town. Dr. Bosco admits that he was “pleasantly surprised to discovery the number of [professor] couples at Centre.”
Perhaps this is due to Centre as an institution, or maybe the many married couples at Centre simply lucked out to be able to come to work at Centre College with their significant other.