Nils Hasselmo, immediate past president of the Association of American Universities and former president of the University of Minnesota, will deliver the 18th annual Louise McBee Lecture on Oct. 20 at 11 a.m. in the Chapel.
The lecture honors Louise McBee former vice president for academic affairs at UGA and former state representative from Athens.
Hasselmo, whose lecture is entitled “My Universities,” served from 1998 until January as president of the Association of American Universities, an organization composed of 60 U.S. and two Canadian public and private universities that have strong programs of research and graduate and professional education.
Prior to the AAU position, Hasselmo served 10 years as the 13th president of the University of Minnesota. He joined the UM faculty in 1965 and left in 1983 for the University of Arizona, where he was senior vice president for academic affairs and provost for five years before returning to the University of Minnesota in 1988.
A native of Sweden, Hasselmo is an authority on bilingualism and language contact and is author of books and articles on the Swedish language in America. He was a Fulbright-Hays scholar in Sweden and Iceland and has lectured and served in visiting appointments at Scandinavian universities.
While he was president of the University of Minnesota, Hasselmo served as chair of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, the Big Ten Council of Presidents and the Minnesota Higher Education Advisory Council.
He also has served on the board of the National Merit Scholarship Corp., the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Universities’ Research Association.
He also has been president of the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study and the Swedish-American Historical Society, and chairman of the Swedish Council of America.