Matt Hartley Awarded Fulbright

February 7, 2011 - The Fulbright Foundation recently awarded Penn GSE Professor Matthew Hartley a Specialist grant for work with the Slovak Governance Institute on civic engagement and service-learning projects.

In the Slovak Republic, higher education has typically been theoretical, providing few chances for students to gain practical knowledge in real-world settings. Universities don’t offer community-based learning courses, nor do they address their role in the local community.

Hartley, whose work focuses on civic engagement and service-learning in higher education, will be working with five Slovak universities and three cultural institutions to help develop this capacity. The project is kicking off with a conference in February on community-based learning and a series of professional development workshops. 

The project will pilot an educational module in community-based learning in which teams of students will apply their theoretical knowledge to real-life problems of cultural development in their local community. The project aims both to improve students’ problem-solving and teamwork skills and to encourage active citizenship for both individual and institutions as crucial components of democratic society.

Participating universities are: the Academy of Performing Arts Bratislava, the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, the Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences, Comenius University Bratislava, the Faculty of Arts, and the Bratislava School of Law. Cultural institutions involved in the project are the Museum of the City of Bratislava, the Gallery of the City of Bratislava,  and the Cultural and Information Centre of Bratislava.

Media contact: Jill DiSanto-Haines / jdisanto@upenn.edu / 215-898-4820