John Hasselberg awarded Fulbright Lecturing/Research grant in Sweden

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June 29, 2009

John Hasselberg, associate professor of management at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University, has been awarded a Fulbright Lecturing/Research grant in Sweden for the 2009-10 academic year.

Hasselberg will be in Sweden from July 13 to Jan. 7, 2010, lecturing and conducting research during the fall semester at Gotland University, Visby, Sweden. The school has a full-time enrollment of approximately 5,000 students.

“Liberal Education, Collaboration and Sustainable Community Development on Gotland” is the title of Hasselberg’s project. Under the grant, he will work with the faculty, staff and students of Gotland University and the broader Gotland communities to help develop the first fully integrated liberal arts/liberal learning university education system in Sweden.

“As the title emphasizes, this is very much a collaborative process,” Hasselberg said. “It’s their system. My role is to enable, consult and facilitate their evolution as effectively as I can.”

Hasselberg expects to be housed with the faculty of the Swedish International Centre of Education for Sustainable Development.

“CSB and SJU are themselves liberal arts colleges with strong emphases on communitarian values and are deeply embedded in the local and regional communities,” Hasselberg said. “We have identified International Education and Environmental Studies as Signature Programs of the colleges, so there is much that I can both bring from our priorities to my work in Sweden and much that I can bring back to enhance programs here.”

Hasselberg added that while it is not clear if a liberal arts education is attractive throughout Sweden, it is clear that Gotland University feels the traditional European educational emphasis “on depth of knowledge of a subject without significant multi-disciplinary societal context is itself not sustainable.”

He is one of approximately 1,100 U.S. faculty and professionals who will travel abroad this academic year through the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program, America’s flagship international educational exchange program. The Fulbright program in Sweden is co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and the Swedish Ministry for Higher Education and Research.  

In addition to Hasselberg, two May graduates from SJU have also received Fulbright commissions to work in South Korea and Austria under the Fulbright U.S. Student Program.

Robert Mevissen (Eden Prairie, Minn.; Minnetonka High School) has been awarded a 2009-10 Fulbright Teaching-Study Grant in Austria. Nikolas Nadeau (Hugo, Minn.; White Bear Lake High School) has been awarded a 2009-10 Fulbright English Teaching Assistant position in South Korea.