Just in case anyone needs to reach me while I'm in Geneva, I'm doing something silly and posting my Skype info here. My Skype name is gweisserman, and my SkypeIn number is 248-686-1632 (which, conveniently, is 686-1OEC ... heh!). You can call it from any phone ... FYI.

So if you haven't heard the story, the morning we left Switzerland this summer, we had to make the long trek from Lugano to Geneva the even longer way due to incredible flooding that had occurred throughout the country. Seeing how we had a plane to catch, I kicked in the afterburners, but knowing the Swiss and their aversion to even the most mild forms of law-bending, I only kicked it in a little.

It happens that because I'm a generally honest guy, I didn't use the UM-rented car to take my family to Lugano for the weekend, but instead rented my own (which was hugely expensive, as was the whole weekend--but that's another story). Bad move, because I was caught by robo-radar going about 20km/hr over the speed limit through the Goddhardt tunnel, and the Swiss police tracked me down back home and mailed me the ticket. All told, with fees and wire transfer costs, it ran about $400--all for going about 12mph over. And I had to pay it, because Geneva's a regular stop now and they actually follow up on this stuff in Switzerland. Naturally, everyone teased me, because if I had used the UM car it's entirely likely no one would have been the wiser.

Well, this morning, I came across this story. Snip:

Switzerland is introducing speed cameras on the slopes to try to reduce the increasing number of accidents. The first such nationwide controls will treat skiers like cars on the motorway. Speeders will be caught with hand-held radar devices carried by hidden personnel.

What, are you kidding me? So let me just say this: if I ski while I'm there next time, I'll be using UM-rented skis ...!

Never bothered to upload most of my pics from Geneva to this site because they were pretty well archived here, but here are a couple of reasonably cute ones of Drew, Simon and Dolly:

Hey, neat editorial on MLive/The Flint Journal today on our Geneva program! Snip:

Seeing the internationalization at the University of Michigan-Flint unfold is fascinating, as it involves much more than new housing to accommodate foreign students. The academic transformation moving across the campus is proving to be the exciting development

An Internet feed from Geneva, Switzerland, featuring a new graduate program, makes clear that internationalization is being felt broadly, affecting the experience of Flint-based students and potentially drawing in new ones from across the world.

In this historic time for UM-Flint, some of its top officials, as well as the first students to enroll in its new Technology in Education Global Program, are reporting from Geneva. The students are the inaugural group in a master's program taught in good part online, but which also requires two three-week stays in Geneva. This city is home to a host of nongovernmental agencies, which are key to the program. It already has drawn students from far beyond Flint.

Graduates are to be prepared to transcend the mere creation of Web sites for use in education, so they might devise ways to use this method of communication to make learning and teaching more powerful. The focus on nonprofits will help students master the teaching of social justice and various societal reforms at a more dynamic level.

As UM-Flint struggled for several years to launch its internationalization program, the Flint community has traveled along vicariously, especially in the quest for student housing, which at long last is under construction.

But the new master's program places the student housing in a larger, much richer context. While the bricks and mortar are important to the campus and the city, they would mean little to a university in the absence of intellectual and pedagogical purposes.

The feed from Geneva demonstrates how far-ranging this commitment of internationalization is on the part of UM-Flint. We can only look forward with greedy anticipation to what will happen next.

I've archived the article in PDF format right here.

More pix up after a few days' pause. Bern in particular was amazing. Check 'em out here.

Nice Flint Journal article about the Geneva program ...

... no photo updates the last day or so, as I loaned out my camera for a bit. But as we progress, we’ve had quite a few fabulous quotes from our various partners. My favorite today was from Cyril Ritchie, President of the Federation of International Institutions in Geneva: “The UN is absolutely a fantastic organization. The problem is that it’s made up of governments.” Also this one: “Governmental outputs are greatly enhanced by non-governmental inputs.”

The intercontinental press conference is later today. More to follow.

Just in case you need to contact us at the John Knox Center and can’t reach us by cell phone, the contact information is:

From within Switzerland: 076 369 8286

From outside Switzerland: 0041 76 369 8286

For direct connection to rooms:

011 41 22 747 00 + room number 011 41 22 747 0075 or 0076 for the studios (Jeff and Gary)