Bio

Passionate about open-access higher education, Lori Halverson-Wente has dedicated her 33-year teaching career toward an active service-learning focus. Lori challenges her students to learn about “culture in their backyard” through various service-based core assignments. This focus has gained Lori the MN State Outstanding Educator Award, a national Service-Learning Collaboration and Civic Engagement Award, and the MN Outstanding Individual in Communication. As a Fulbright Scholar (Denmark), International Fellow (Cambodia) and Rotary International Global Grant Co-Author (Guatemala), Lori studied/taught migration and refugee movements on three continents. Authoring and managing numerous grants covering intercultural service-learning, communication skill development, human rights, and education helped fund crucial social justice work. She writes open education resources and textbooks, sharing stories of local refugees and immigrants. Her current sabbatical project includes researching and writing about the lived experiences of diverse individuals swept up in a diaspora.

Project

As an educator, I am honored to listen to and learn more about the experiences of local refugees, immigrants, and asylum-seekers in my own “backyard” of Minnesota, USA. I integrate many of their harrowing stories in a free, video-rich online “Open Education Resource” textbook: Developing Intercultural Communication Competency. The unique collegial interaction, diverse views and backgrounds, presentations, and personal experiences from fellow residents provide perspectives for completing my educational chapter units on migration, refugee, and asylum-seeking sections for this project. I will edit, write, and lead interactive online activities associated with teaching intercultural communication and patterns of migration.