University of Southern Maine

Teaching and Leading in the 21st Century

The College of Education and Human Development (CEHD) will host four well-known teachers and scholars to the University of Southern Maine during the 2009 – 2010 academic year to address issues related to teaching and leading in the 21st Century. 

• Margaret Wheatley
  OCTOBER 15, 2009
  Margaret Wheatley writes, teaches, and speaks about how people might organize and accomplish work in chaotic times.  She invites her students, readers and other audiences to attend to the quality of their relationships to weather the increasing turbulence.  In 1992 Dr. Wheatley founded the Berkana Institute, a charitable organization with a mission of community development in mostly Third World nations.  Her path-breaking book Leadership and the New Science, first published in 1992, has been translated into more than 20 languages.  This book has been credited with establishing a fundamentally new approach to how we think about organizations.
• Henry Giroux
  NOVEMBER 12-13, 2009
  Giroux, author of the AESA Critics’ Choice Award in 2008 for The University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex, holds the Global Television Network Professorship at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. His primary research areas are cultural studies, youth studies, critical pedagogy, popular culture, social theory, and the politics of higher and public education.  His most recent book, Youth in a Suspect Society: Democracy or Disposability? was published in September. Giroux is a 1967 graduate of Gorham State College, a predecessor school of USM.
  
• Stephen Brookfield
  MAY 19-20, 2010
  Stephen Brookfield has worked in England, Canada, Australia, and the United States in a variety of adult educational, community, and higher education settings.  Formerly Professor of Adult Education at Teacher’s College (Columbia University) he currently serves as Distinguished University Professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, MN.  His book titles include Understanding and Facilitating Adult Learning (1986), Developing Critical Thinkers (1987), Discussion as a Way of Teaching (2005),  The Skillful Teacher (2006), and most recently Learning as a Way of Leading (2008). 
  
• Sonia Nieto
  JUNE 2-3, 2010
  Sonia Nieto is Professor Emerita of Language, Literacy, and Culture at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.  She has taught and written on multicultural education, teacher preparation, and the education of Latinos and other culturally and linguistically diverse populations.  Her book Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of Multicultural Education (5th edition in 2008) is widely used in teacher preparation and in-service courses throughout the United States and internationally.  Other books related to the series theme are entitled The Light in Their Eyes: Creating Multicultural Learning Communities (1999) and What Keeps Teachers Going? (2003).  Dr. Nieto edits the Language, Culture, and Teaching Series for Routledge Publishers.
  

Each visiting scholar will give a public lecture and workshop.