By John Potter

October 6, 2009

Professor Chris Hasselmann brings first-hand experience to political science classes here at Elmhurst College.

This is Hasselmann’s first year at EC but he has taught at other institutions like Tufts University in Massachusetts, the University of Pittsburgh, and most recently Aurora University.          

Hasselmann attended George Washington University in D.C. where he majored in international affairs. After his undergraduate years he took five years off before he returned to school for his masters degree.       

 “So, I worked in immigration for about a year or so, and I worked academic conferences at G.W. for a while, and then I actually worked for a residency program in pediatrics at Georgetown Hospital for a couple years.”        

Despite the time off and the latitude of fields he worked in he would go on to attend America University in D.C. for his masters.

“I always knew I wanted to go back and eventually teach. Be a college professor and do research.”      

He pointed out the significance of living abroad in his life and career choice.

“During grad school I got a chance to live in Hungary  for awhile, Czech Republic briefly, and Germany for a little bit. Doing research on policy reform and what that process told us about democracy in Eastern Europe.”         

The particular time he attended school and visited Eastern Europe was quite significant as well.

“I was in college right when the wall came down and all this stuff that came out of it, what’s next, where do we go from here. It was sort of a fortuitous time to be interested in policy reform and economic issues and the politics behind them.”   

Hasselmann explains the particular appeal this region would hold for those interested in policy reform and creation. “It was a natural attraction to the region, a place to see what they’re going to try and do and how they were going to do it and try and understand this stuff.”  

He would later choose the region and its subject matter for the focus of his dissertation: examining the effects of domestic and international politics in post-Cold War Europe.

“I was able to show that there was a functioning democratic  process in fairly short order after the wall came down. Even though we look at it and say we have a long way to go. If you actually look how they made major policy changes it did seem to reflect what we would consider democratic processes.”           

Hasselmann explains the benefit, as a teacher, to have actually lived in the region during this point in time.

“If you really want to teach students about some of these experiences and events. It’s not enough just to have read a lot about it. Spend some time in those places and learn those things that don’t make it into the books but became part of the story.”  

Hasselmann has an interest in teaching students the lessons he took from his experiences abroad. He feels optimistic about the opportunity to do this in his international political economy class this spring.         

He also hopes to continue some of his research while at the school. “You have to keep doing some research so you can advance the area you study, and we can turn it around and teach it to students. Otherwise we’re just teaching you what we learned 50 years ago and there’s no forward progress, and we need forward progress.”