Lars Christiansen
Associate Professor
christil@augsburg.edu

“The ideal of using the present simply to get ready for the future contradicts itself.  It omits, even shuts out, the very conditions by which a person can be prepared for his future.  We always live at the time we live and not some other time, and only by extracting at each present time the full meaning of each present experience are we prepared for doing the same in the future.  This is the only preparation which in the long run amounts to anything.  All this means that attentive care must be devoted to the conditions which give each present experience a worthwhile meaning. . . . Education as growth or maturity should be an ever-present process.”  John Dewey (1938: 49)

Lars Christiansen joined the Department of Sociology and the Metro-Urban Studies Program at Augsburg in 2001.  Lars studies work, labor & organizations; urban studies; social movements; the philosophy and sociology of education; and research methods.

INNOVATIONS IN TEACHING:
Lars is currently creating an exciting new study-abroad course with Professor Nancy Fischer titled, “Sustainable Cities:  A Comparison of the U.S. and Canada.”  This course, to be held in July 2008, will take twenty students to Portland, Oregon for one week, and Vancouver, BC for almost two weeks.  We will explore and analyze these cities as well as the Twin Cities, and will meet with scholars, policy makers, and community organizers/activists to better understand how these cities are accomplishing progressive planning practices and the obstacles they face.  The deadline for registering for this course in February 1, 2008.  Please follow the link below for more information:

http://www.augsburg.edu/augsburgabroad/Canada.pdf

Lars is also in the process, with five other faculty members and several support staff, of creating a new first-year learning community with 90 students.  Together we will utilize our respective disciplines and creative teaching/learning activities to find answers to the questions we pose and to demonstrate interactive inquiry.  This truly interdisciplinary learning community, tentatively titled the “Evergreen Learning Community” is proposed to be offered to incoming students in Fall 2009.

MAJOR RESEARCH PROJECTS:
Lars is engaged in a major research project on alternative post-secondary liberal-arts schools as a way to address questions about the meaning, purpose of practices of education.  Through extensive interviews with faculty, students and administrators, and archival document analysis, this project is a case study comparison of six colleges and universities:  Alverno College, The Evergreen State College, Hampshire College, New College of Florida, Sarah Lawrence College, and the University of California at Santa Cruz.  These schools use (or once used) alternatives to traditional grades such as narrative evaluations and portfolios, and are characterized by other significant curricular innovations.

Once he has completed the education project, Lars is planning on engaging another major project, this one on transportation systems in various global cities, particularly those cities where the bicycle is a dominant mode of transit.  This will be another comparative study, most likely focusing on Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and Mackinac Island.

Lars has published in the American Sociological Review, International Review of Social History, and The Journal of Academic Librarianship.

SERVICE AT AUGSBURG
Lars is director of the Sociology Department’s Concentration in Organizational Studies, and currently serves on the Social Science Liberal Arts Foundation Collaborative.  He is past member of the Augsburg Faculty Senate (2005-2007), the Assessment Committee, and was faculty advisor for Augsburg’s Sociology Club (2002-2006).

INTERESTS BEYOND ACADEMIA
When not doing scholarship, Lars is a composer and performer in the Twin Cities music scene.  He is currently in three projects:  Singlespeed, Sweet Science, and houseluna.