Dr. Stephen Jones, Antioch University New England’s (AUNE) new president, will speak about The Nature of Leadership for the AUNE Fall Speaker Series on Thursday, Oct. 17. The event, which is free and open to the public, is at 7 p.m. in the AUNE Community Room.
Jones, who has a passion for nature, refers to Emanuel Swedenborg, eighteenth-century Swedish mystic, philosopher, theologian, and scientist, to explain his topic. Swedenborg’s central philosophical tenet was correspondence, in which nature embodies all the lessons of life’s physical and spiritual reality, Jones said.
I will offer reflections on how, likewise, our natural world offers powerful truths applicable to learning, living, and leading, Jones said. I have found inspiration, solace, and illumination in the natural world, written more indelibly, powerfully, and succinctly than any management text could possibly encapsulate.
Jones pointed out that Swedenborg also believed that coincidence actually occurs only with purpose, meaning, and intent. That is, coincidence is another form of correspondence, he said. I will speak to how such correspondence led me uncannily to this AUNE presidency.
Jones became AUNE’s new president on July 1, after serving as president of Urbana University in Ohio for five years. He had been chancellor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, vice chancellor for extension and engagement at North Carolina State University, and director of the Alabama Cooperative Extension System at Auburn University. He also served at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry and at Pennsylvania State University . He has written extensively on forestry and sustainability.
For more information about this event, contact Sean Wiley, 603-283-2431, or email [email protected]
