NATO and European Experiences

I had the pleasure of helping to organize two meetings funded by NATO in  the 1990s: a one-week Advanced Research Workshop held in Sitges, Spain, and a two-week Advanced Study Institute held in Grimstad, Norway. the latter had 84 participants from many countries. Both meetings were quite successful and eventually led me to take a position at the University of Bergen (UiB) in Norway.The first PhD student I supervised was at UiB and is now a full professor in Sweden. I had visited UiB previously as a Fulbright research scholar and had been provided a tour of the European Commission, which was also quite impressive. I worked in Europe for about 4 years and found myself in the midst of outstanding scholars and very tolerant people everywhere I went. I was invited to the University of Freiburg as a visiting scholar several times and found students there to be quite advanced and eager to learn. I have been an external evaluator on two large European Commission funded networks of excellence -  one on technology enhanced learning (STELLAR) and one on game-based learning (GaLA). I found both efforts to be quite good with many universities involved. Scholarship in Europe is quite strong. Our friends in Europe must be wondering what is happening in the USA and why the current administration seems intent on abandoning long-standing and very productive relationships. I too wonder.