AERA SIG

Peace Education

2008 Annual Meeting News

The Peace Education SIG is pleased to welcome speakers Anita Wendon and Frans C. Verhagen to present at our 2008 Business Meeting.  Brief biographies are listed below for your information.

ANITA WENDEN is co-founder of Earth and Peace Education Associates International, Director of Peace Education and Research for the organization, and editor of Transitions, their electronic educational resource. She is Professor Emerita of York College, City University of New York, where she co-founded and served as director of the College's Cultural Diversity Program. She has also taught at the UN mandated University for Peace (Costa Rica) and is founder and book review editor of the Journal of Peace Education.  Her anthology, Educating for a Culture of Social and Ecological Peace (SUNY Press, 2004), illustrates approaches that integrate education for social and ecological peace.  Dr. Wenden has also developed a profiling and envisioning process for introducing value-based planning for socially and ecologically sustainable communities to leaders of business, government and civil society.

FRANS C. VERHAGEN, M. Div., M.I.A., Ph.D., is a sustainability sociologist with Earth and Peace Education Associates International (EPE) in New York City.  After working in Ghana in the sixties, he studied international affairs and the sociology of international development at Columbia University, specializing in energy, environment, and sustainability.  His concept of contextual sustainability formed the organizing principle of the Earth Community School model of secondary education which he developed during his teaching for the New York City Board of Education.  Presently, he teaches a course on sustainable communities at Pace University and a course on sustainable aviation at Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology.  Both courses can be considered to expand civic education into sustainability education, the former by being engaged in the local community, and the latter by working towards a socially and ecologically responsible aviation industry.

SPECIAL BULLETIN:

We are delighted to launch our Peace Education SIG Newsletter on a new website – that of AERA.  This is a new service available to SIGs this year. Please bookmark the new web address: http://www.aera.net/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=831. However, it is also simple to log on to  www.aera.net. Then, on the left side, click on SIGs and choose "H-Q" in the alphebetical listing in the SIG Directory and scroll down to Peace Education SIG. 

We are very grateful to Melanie Hoekstra, Program Assistant, for her valuable help and Bob Nedbal, Director of Information Technology and Web Services, for initial set-up guidance; both are from the AERA Central Office Staff.

--Aline Stomfay-Stitz, Online Newsletter Editor