14 Cultural Diplomacy

I have been an active and committed member across the College community involved in numerous roles and activities over the course of the past five years.

Perhaps most importantly, I served as Chair of the Department of Scandinavian Studies from June 2012 to May 2015. I stepped into this role after the Department’s senior member was offered and accepted a position in Scandinavian Studies in Europe in May 2012. I immediately oversaw a search for a Visiting Assistant Professor to fill her position for the 2012–13 academic year and put forth a proposal to chair a search for the vacated tenure-track position, with the search to take place in 2012–13. Both searches brought highly skilled teachers and scholars to campus (Dr. Carl Olsen in the one-year VAP role from 2012–13, and Dr. Ursula Lindqvist in the tenure-track position she began in fall 2013). One of the three accomplishments I am most proud of as I consider my three years in the role of Chair of Scandinavian Studies, is the hire of Ursula, a gifted, committed, prominent teacher and scholar in the fields of Swedish and Scandinavian Studies. This could not have happened without the help of my colleagues on the Search Committee, Glenn Kranking and Steve Mellema. Second, I am grateful for steady growth in terms of enrollment in our Department, in particular in our Swedish language curriculum, so much so that we demonstrated the need to offer a third section of our first-year (SWE-101 and SWE-102) courses. Before we were able to hire a visiting instructor to teach this extra fall course and spring course, I taught, during the 2013–14 academic year, the courses as an overload in addition to chairing a Department whose faculty had never had a course release for the administrative work of chairing. Beginning in 2014–15 and continuing this year, our Department has been able to bring in a visiting instructor of Swedish, David Jessup, to teach the third section of the SWE-101 and SWE-102 cycle. Third, while I have been chair, the Department of Scandinavian Studies at Gustavus came to be the campus with the greatest number of students studying Swedish among all of the colleges and universities in the U.S. where the language is offered (including the University of Minnesota, University of Washington, University of Wisconsin, University of California Berkeley, among others). While this happened during my tenure as chair, it only could have come about with support from our administration, from faculty colleagues on campus, and from my amazing colleagues—Glenn, Ursula, and David. I will step into chair the Department again this coming IEX and spring of 2016 while my colleague (and current department chair) Glenn Kranking is on sabbatical.

Our Department is a busy and active one. I have been a highly engaged member of it throughout my five years at Gustavus. I interact with and support on a daily basis my colleagues and students in the department. I attend student-run “fikas” (coffee hours) and other dinners and special events they organize and serve as the faculty advisor to the student-run Viking Club, which organizes and oversees numerous activities through the year open to the entire Gustavus community. For the past three years I supervised the Department’s Swedish language tutors and work-study student assistants. I have also invited and hosted writers and translators who visited campus for a week-long stay as part of our Department’s annual Out of Scandinavia Artist in Residence Program. Along with my colleagues in the Department, I have helped to organize and arrange the annual Yuletide Breakfast, which we host for the campus and St. Peter/Mankato community each December, and I have brought students to the Upper Midwest Nordic retreat, held annually in February in Beaver Creek, Wisconsin. This weekend-long event gathers together students of Scandinavian Studies at other universities and colleges in the Upper Midwest as well as members of the public who have an interest in the region. In this setting our students have the opportunity to present a piece of their scholarship and to learn about scholarship being done by their peers at other institutions. I annually help coordinate and host our Department’s Student-Alumni Homecoming BBQ. I have represented our Department at lectures, talks, dinners, and events co-sponsored by other Departments, Programs, and Administrative Offices across the campus. Some of this work feels like cultural diplomacy, most of it is insightful and enjoyable, and it is always filled with chances to meet and interact with new (and familiar) people and represent the Department and the College.

During my three years as Chair of Scandinavian Studies, I served on Gustavus’s Department Chair and Program Director Committee (DCPDC). In this setting I learned much about the College, how it functions, about transparency and communication, and about listening and learning. In 2014 –15, I served on the Compensation Subcommittee that formed to investigate and propose more-equitable, fair, and uniform standards of compensation for all department and program chairs. While we made some headway and had some success (monetary compensation is now given to all department and program heads, and a minimum of one course release has been given to all department chairs), I feel that there is still work to be done. Though my three-year term as Department Chair is over, I plan to remain involved in these conversations and efforts as the subcommittee continues its work.

As I hope has been established already in this statement, I am passionate about helping our students learn about, think about, and engage with the world at large. In addition to the work I do in the classroom on a day-to-day basis on these issues, I also served on the Global Engagement Committee (GEC; formerly IDPC) from 2011–12, and I will complete my third of a current three-year term on the Committee during this 2015–16 academic year. We are committed to increasing global engagement, intercultural awareness and communication, and discussions related diversity and inclusion on campus.

During the 2011–12 academic year, I co-chaired the College’s Global Insight Program on the world’s “Circumpolar Region.” Along with fellow co-chair, my former colleague in Scandinavian Studies Assistant Professor Helena Karlsson, and a talented steering committee of faculty colleagues and faculty and staff collaborators from across the campus, we put together and ran a visible and impressive program. Each month of the year featured an area of the world’s circumpolar region, and throughout the month we had films, speakers from off campus and on, as well as meals in the Market Place served that focused on the region. While it was an intense and busy year, I am proud of final result: people were engaged with the topic, learned more about this region of the world, and the program brought people from across campus together.

That same year of 2011–12, Gustavus was celebrating its sesquicentennial. The theme of the College’s annual MAYDAY! Peace Conference considered the College’s history and its founding by Swedish immigrants and wanted, through this program, to investigate Sweden today—a much different place than it was a century and a half ago. Whereas then Swedes were emigrating from Sweden looking for a better life, greater freedoms, and new possibilities, today’s Sweden is seeing just the inverse: tens of thousands of refugees and immigrants are moving to Sweden each year. What does Sweden today look like? How do these migrations manifest themselves? Who is moving to Sweden? Why? How is Swedish society working with its new populations? All three faculty in our department were members of the MAYDAY! planning committee, and we combined our annual week-long Out of Scandinavia Artist in Residence program with MAYDAY! to bring the Swedish-Tunisian writer Jonas Hassan Khemiri to address some of these questions, as well as the Kurdish-Swedish journalist and writer Dilsa Demirbag-Sten to offer her thoughts. In addition to the year-long planning for the early May event, I introduced Demirbag-Sten when she gave her keynote address and I was part of a panel discussion on the issue of “Multicultural Sweden” for the program.

I am a strong advocate for issues surrounding diversity on campus. I have served as a faculty mentor in the Diversity Center’s Mentoring for Student Success Program, and on the search committee for the Bruce Gray Postdoctoral Fellowship Program for the GWS Program.

Other events and initiatives of the College I have been part of include: Scholarship Days interviewer, Presidential Scholarship interviewer, Fulbright Application Committee interviewer through the Gustavus Fellowships Office, on-campus NEH Summer Stipend proposals evaluator, and numerous events and efforts through the Admissions Office including outreach work with both prospective students and their parents. I regularly attend Faculty Development Days, my colleagues’ Shop Talks, Faculty Socials, and work to be an active part of the Gustavus community on a daily basis.

In the future I will continue to serve on campus-wide committees and remain engaged in campus life and community, support students, and faculty and staff colleagues across campus. I hope to lead Gustavus’s Semester in Sweden Program and also have interest in leading our India and Malaysia exchange programs. I will remain committed building to a campus of inclusivity, tolerance, respect, academic excellence, greater diversity, and local and global knowledge and understanding.