Dr. Marilyn Hadley
Dr. Kieran Egan, an internationally acclaimed author and leading educational theorist, will be the keynote speaker for the James E. Smith Midwest Conference on World Affairs, which takes place Monday and Tuesday, March 7-8, on the campus.
Dr. Egan will take part in a roundtable discussion, beginning at 9 a.m. Monday in the Nebraskan Student Union Ponderosa Room. He will give the keynote address 12:30 – 1:45 p.m. Tuesday in Ponderosa Room E in the Nebraskan. His presentation is titled “The Mind we Share: Tools of the Imagination.”
A professor of education at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, Dr. Egan heads the Imaginative Education Research Group. The author of more than 10 books, several of which have been translated into more than a half-dozen European and Asian languages, Dr. Egan is the only person from outside the United States to be elected to the U.S. National Academy of Education. He is also recipient of the prestigious Killiam Award, a national research fellowship.
The Imaginative Education Research Group was founded in 2001 as the result of funds attached to the Canada Research Chair in Education, which was awarded to Dr. Egan.
The annual three-day conference is sponsored on a rotating basis by the four colleges on the UNK campus, coordinated through the Office of International Education and planned around a central theme. This year the conference, which is sponsored by the College of Education, is built on the theme “Connecting With the ‘Other’: Education’s Global Role.” The conference is free and open to the public.
“A committee of College of Education faculty representatives from each department developed the program, so that the program meets the needs and interests of students in our programs, as well as programs in other colleges,” said Dr. Marilyn Hadley, dean of the UNK College of Education.
For more information on speakers, diplomats and performers, go to:
http://www.unk.edu/committees/world_affairs/2005WAC/home.htm
The schedule of events follows:
2005 JAMES E. SMITH MIDWEST CONFERENCE ON WORLD AFFAIRS
MONDAY – 3/7/05
9:05am – 9:55am Ponderosa E
Roundtable discussion about the future of public education
Kieren Egan
Professor, College of Education
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, Canada
Cecilia Zarate
Cofounder of the Colombia Support Network
10:10am – 11:00 am Ponderosa A
Ethnic Identity and Conflict in Education
Jaime Aparicio, Ambassador, Embassy of Bolivia
Cristina Camacho, Second Secretary, Embassy of Ecuador
Khazar Ibrahim, Educational Officer, Embassy of Azerbaijan
11:15am – 12:05pm Ponderosa C
Higher Education in Iraq: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
J. Thomas Owens, Project Director, Al Sharaka Program for Higher Education in Iraq, College of Continuing Education, University of Oklahoma
11:15am – 12:05pm Ponderosa D
International Exchange: Vytautas Magnus and UNK
Antanas Gostautas, Chair, Department of Theoretical Psychology, Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania
12:20pm
Take a Delegate to Lunch
1:30pm – 3:00pm Ponderosa A
Panel Discussion on Immigration Issues
Panel will view introduction to the Mockumentary:”A Day Without a Mexican” as a point of departure
Edward W. Leahy, Coordinator
Immigrant Rights Network of Iowa and Nebraska
Carole Nagengast, Chair of the Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico
Luis Alva, Deputy Consul General, Consulate of Mexico, Omaha, Nebraska
3:15pm – 4:30pm Ponderosa A
Serve to Learn/Learn to Serve
Edward W. Leahy, Coordinator
Immigrant Rights Network of Iowa and Nebraska
Jorge Santamaria, Pastor
Cristo Cordero de Dios
Grand Island, Nebraska
7:30pmFine Arts Recital Hall
MAIN PERFORMANCE
Richard Kogan, Pianist
Music and Medicine : George Gershwin
TUESDAY-3/8/05
9:30am – 11:00am Ponderosa C/D
Higher Education Reform in the Newly Expanded European Union: Will Education become too costly and too generic?
Vytautas Kaminskas, Rector, Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania
Antanas Gostautas, Chair, Department of Theoretical Psychology, Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania
Nijole Gostautaite Midttun, Interpreter for session
9:30am – 11:00am Ponderosa A/B
Learning Ethnic and Religious Identity as the “Other”
Dr. Saurjan Yakupov, Director, Sharh va Tavsiya Sociology Center, Tashkent, Uzbekistan
Dr. Eva Borreguera – Department of Political Science and Administration, Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Kornelija Jurgaitiene, Minister Plenipotentiary, Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania
Carole Nagengast, Chair of the Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico
12:30pm – 1:45pm Ponderosa E
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
The Mind we Share: Tools of the Imagination
Kieren Egan, Professor, College of Education, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada
Kieran Egan will explore the “tools of the imagination”- such as stories, metaphor, images generated from words, associating with the heroic, probing the limits of experience and the possible and how these can form the most secure basis for a broader and more global form of education that can emphasize our connection to the “other” rather than our differences.
NOTE: For more information on the keynote speaker, go to: http://www.educ.sfu.ca/kegan/
2:00pm – 3:15pm Ponderosa A/B
Education and Fundamentalism
Raheem Yaseer, Assistant Director, Afghan Studies Center, University of Nebraska Omaha
Robert Wolfson, Executive Director, Plains States Region, Anti Defamation League
Mushtak Malik, Embassy of Pakistan
Alaa Eldin Youssef, Counselor, Embassy of Egypt
2:00pm – 3:15pm Ponderosa E
Development of Programs to Assist the Integration of Immigrant Families/Students in Nebraska
Karen Buchfinch, ELL Counselor, Crete High School
Odalys Perez, Director, Multicultural Coalition of Grand Island
Amir A. Azimi, Administrator, Health and Human Services, Lincoln, Nebraska
Jerry Bergstrom, Principal, Pershing Elementary School, Lexington, NE
3:30pm – 5:00pm Ponderosa E
Employee Life Around the Globe: Understanding How “Others” View the Workplace
Presented by the UNK Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) team and the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) student chapter
