A statement by Dr. Gwendolyn Hustvedt, the President of the International Federation for Home Economics, on some of her plans for the start of her 2020-2024 term of office.
Category: Leadership
In 2017, I was very honored to be approached by members of my region to submit my name as a nominee for IFHE President Elect. As part of the Leadership Council meeting in Khartom, Sudan in 2018, I developed and presented a 5 minute video about my vision for IFHE and for increasing future membership. It is posted on Youtube for your review.
I had an intriguing conversation with a new friend in Copenhagen last week. She teaches innovation to Nutrition and Foods students at a professional school in the city. Over lunch we talked about working with colleagues to create improvements (not even innovation!) And I confessed that one challenge I had was the need for credit for envisioning, in great detail, a good idea. Continue reading “Rewarding Innovation”
I developed a professional website last year based on the encouragement I received during my ACE Fellowship. Both a fellow Fellow and a mentor at my host institution suggested that I have a unique perspective as an academic and I should share this with the world. Using social media has been an adventure and I have really enjoyed doing my part in increasing awareness of Home Economics and the special topics that I am interested in: STEM Education for Women and Minorities, Sustainability and International Development. Continue reading “Being More”
One of the first questions my fellow faculty have asked about my seeking positions of leadership is “why do you want to do this”? I can’t write their tone of voice, so you will have to imagine their incredulousness mixed with suspicion. So, why do I want to “be” a leader? Firstly, I would beg to rephrase this. I don’t think I can be a leader. I know that if people put their faith in me, I become their leader. This means that the first element of my philosophy of leadership is that I need the help of those around me to become the leader I would like to be. This help comes when I listen carefully to the people who have asked me to lead. A given in this element of my philosophy is that leadership is not something you can take from others. This is especially true in the academic context. Many people are drawn to academics because they have a unique and powerful vision of the world that they want to experience and share. Continue reading “Leadership: How I see it”
The generation sandwiched between the post-war baby boom and the 1980s baby boom, popularly but not always happily known as Generation X, came of age during massive societal shifts that directly impact their perspective on the nature of home, family, and professionalism. Leadership for this generation was leadership into the third wave of feminism. With the 1980s being the signature decade for this cohort, while the generation has been stereotyped as the “slacker” generation, our hard-won distrust of the stability of fundamental structures of society was sharped by AIDS, trickle-down economics, divorce/single parenthood and the dawn of the two-income family.