Airlifted From Sweden

An excerpt from this week’s CFA Blog by CFA Director Pamela Tatge:

What’s it like to be airlifted from your university in Sweden to join the faculty at Wesleyan for a semester? Erik Westberg was delighted to tell us. He is the professor of choral conducting and choral singing at the Pitea College of Music, Lulea University of Technology in Sweden and is visiting this semester conducting Wesleyan’s Concert Choir and teaching choral conducting.

He’s here on a grant from STINT, the Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education, which supports a visiting professor program with the idea, as Westberg says, "to bring ideas from here back to Sweden." Historically, the program has selected history and literature professors--Erik is the first music professor to be chosen. A list of professors is sent to American universities, who then have the opportunity to choose a professor for a residency. As Westberg puts it, Angel Gil-Ordóñez, director of the Wesleyan Orchestra, and Krishna Winston, Dean of the Arts and Humanities, saw his name and "decided why don't we bring this Swedish guy here?"

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