[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/saltman-outside-1.jpg” caption=”Ken Saltman”]This week, Depaul University, Lincoln Park associate professor Kenneth Saltman took up residence at McMaster's Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, as the 2006 Fulbright-McMaster Visiting Research Chair in Globalization and Cultural Studies.

Saltman is an accomplished young scholar compiling a most impressive record of scholarship which bridges cultural studies, communications and education. He is the author, co-author, or co-editor of five books examining the corporatization of schooling in the U.S. and several refereed journal articles. He has taught a wide variety of course on the sociology of education, philosophy of education, youth and middle school, culture and education and educational psychology.

As a Fulbrighter, Saltman will explore new corporate projects of privatizing and commercializing public schooling in the Western hemisphere. He will address issues such as international investment and its relation to regional hemispheric trade agreements, global implications of public school commercialism initiatives, and transformations in the culture of public education and school curriculum resulting from the reformulation of the U.S. national security strategy. This cross-disciplinary approach, which Saltman also applies in his teaching, will no doubt add something new to the growing body of literature on globalization, education and privatization.

“Part of what distinguishes my project is the bridging of educational policy and theory with specifically the kind of work done on globalization and culture at McMaster's Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition,” says Saltman.

His first public lecture at McMaster will be on the topic of “Creative Associates International, Inc.: Corporate Schooling and 'Democracy Promotion' in Iraq”. This inaugural Fulbright Seminar will take place on Friday, Jan. 13 at 12 p.m., in Wentworth Lounge of the Phoenix at McMaster, and will be followed by a reception. Saltman will also be teaching a new graduate course 'Global Corporate Schooling' in the Globalization Studies MA program while at McMaster.

“The areas of education and pedagogy are key areas for understanding the character of the global human condition, both with respect to changes in formal, instutional forms of education such as public schooling, as well as to the numerous forms of informal social education carried out through the mass media and the programs of governments and a variety of non-govermental institutions,” says Robert O'Brien, acting director of the Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition. “We are very fortunate to have a scholar of Dr. Saltman's calibre working on these issues here at our Institute this semester.”

Long regarded as the world's premiere academic exchange program, the Fulbright attracts exceptional scholars from more than 150 countries worldwide. Among the fastest growing of the bilateral exchanges is the Canada-US Fulbright Program. Named for former U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright and supported by the Department of Foreign Affairs Canada and the United States Department of State, the Canada-US Fulbright Program has engaged more than 800 scholars in high-level academic exchanges since 1990.