The Special Education and Communication Disorders Department is hosting Dr. Hannu Savolainen, who will be availableat an open forum for doctoral and masters students interested in Public Education and Graduate School in Finland that will be held Tuesday, April 3, 2012 from 4:00-6:00 pm in Room 302 Barkley Memorial Center. Refreshmentswill be provided. Please RSVP to Heidi Menard at hmenard1@unl.edu.

Hannu Savolainen is a professor of special education at the University of Eastern Finland (UEF). Previously worked as team leader in the UNESCO Flagship program on inclusive education, as a special education / inclusive education expert in international development co-operation in Africa and the Balkans area and as the Executive director of Niilo Mäki Institute, the largest academic unit concentrating on research and development work on learning difficulties in Finland. Currently he serves as the Vice Dean of Philosophical faculty of UEF and is the principal researcher in a project developing approaches for responding to problem behavior in Finnish schools. He has recently published on such topics as strength based measurement of social and emotional problems, international comparative on teachers’ perceptions and self-efficacy, implementing inclusive education, and the short and long term social and academic outcomes of learning difficulties in late adolescence.