International Center Board of Directors Dear Service ... - Conference.ie

International Center for Service-Learning in Teacher Education
Dear Service-Learning Colleagues,
Welcome to the Second International Conference on Service-Learning in Teacher Education, to the wonderful
and splendid city of Galway and to the resplendent National University of Ireland Galway. A cead míle fáilte
(A thousand welcomes!).
We are delighted that you could join us to contribute your talent and experience to a collaborative and growing
network of service-learning practitioners and researchers. For some of you it will be an opportunity to rekindle
old acquaintances from the 1st International Conference in Brussels, 2007. For those of you who are
engaging for the first time, we hope that it will be a truly memorable experience and that you will continue to
be an active member of the global network. The initial planning for this conference commenced immediately
after the Brussels conference, and we would like to extend a heartfelt gratitude for all those who gave of their
time to make this event possible.
The truly international representation should allow for a wonderful opportunity to engage in deep and
meaningful conversations about the current status of service-learning, locally and globally, as well as possible
future trends that may be emerging. Our conversations will be facilitated by an excellent array of presentations
and plenary sessions. Also, the home group forums will provide an additional vehicle for continuing those
conversations in small groups. And, the panel conversation on current issues and future trends in servicelearning
on Friday afternoon will provide a capstone opportunity to re-visit those themes in a wider forum. A
panel of experienced and interested service-learning practitioners will contribute to it.
We are very privileged indeed to have three excellent keynotes from Tom Collins, Professor of Education at the
National University of Ireland Maynooth, from Professor Anne Sliwka, Professor of Education at Heidelberg
University of Education, and from Andy Furco, Associate Vice President for Public Engagement at the
University of Minnesota. They will add greatly to the conference proceedings, and we hope that you will have
the opportunity to engage with them over the course of it.
However, it would be remiss of us not to point out that you will be located in one of the most picturesque and
beautiful parts of Ireland, and we certainly hope that you will be able to take full advantage of the sights and
sounds of Galway while you are here.
Looking forward to meeting all of you during the course of the conference and for those of you who are
travelling from afar, we wish you a safe and pleasant journey.
Jean Strait
Hamline University
Conference Co-Chair
Timothy Murphy
Leeds Metropolitan University
Conference Co-Chair
102 Tillman Hall, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634 USA
Phone +864.656.6575, Facsimile +864.656.0311, Web www.Clemson.edu/ICSLTE
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