Translating Liberal Education

Tisdag 3 november kl. 15.00-17.00 Högskolan på Gotland, Visby, Sal B 51

Öppen föreläsning - Open lecture


John Hasselberg, Fulbrightstipendiat och gästprofessor vid Högskolan på Gotland:

This lecture will primarily focus on defining and describing the nature and purposes of liberal arts/liberal education systems of learning. Tomorrow's social and economic realities and uncertainties require that to understand ourselves, our organizations, our communities and our disciplines we must appreciate their context and circumstances. Liberal arts colleges emphasize creative, critical and complex thinking and so require study of fine arts, literatures, languages, philosophies, politics, histories, mathematics, and sciences as well as one's major discipline. Thus interest is growing internationally in crafting university programs modeled on the American multidisciplinary liberal arts/liberal education system.

The vision of building a model liberal education program in Swedish and European higher education at Gotland University (HGO) is most inspiring. Under the auspices of a Fulbright research/lecturing fellowship this year I am applying my liberal arts, management and international education experience to work with HGO faculty, students, staff and local community stakeholders to study and to support this project. The project itself is entitled: Liberal Education, Collaboration and Sustainable Community Development on Gotland.

The adaptation and fine tuning of any education model internationally necessarily entails adapting the liberal education strategies to their particular location, values, purposes and identity. This island provides a wonderfully inspiring environment in which to develop a sustainable, useful, inspiring, community engaged liberal educational system. As it is with liberal arts colleges in the U.S., applying knowledge by engaging the university community with the society and institutions with which they live and work is a priority. Thus a part of our strategy at HGO will be to focus on how the university can be even more synergistically integrated into and collaborative with the local communities on sustainable development strategies and social, cultural and economic entrepreneurship incentives.

Om John Hasselberg:

I have been described by my closest friend in Sweden as a "levnadskonstnär". Although over the course of my life I have engaged in a wide variety of creative activities, I most enjoy working in academia, especially liberal arts colleges. The life of learning, of 'passion and vetenskap', affords enormous flexibility, opportunity for creativity and for making a contribution to the future through helping hone and develop the dreams and skills of generations following after us.

I feel strongly that one must constantly blend and balance theory and practice in an integrative and ever evolving fashion in order to make the best possible use of one's gifts. Thus I have been a professor of management since earning my Juris Doctor and Masters in Business Administration degrees in 1985. Since 1989 I have been on the faculty of the College of St. Benedict/St. John's University in Minnesota, two private liberal arts colleges that function in a coordinate relationship. I am also an adjuct faculty in the University of Minnesota Master in Liberal Studies program.