On February 3, 2021, Dr. Tony Klemmer, founder and president of Wisdom for Good and the National Academy of Advanced Teacher Education, will facilitate a seminar for faculty and staff at Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota on “Moral Goodness and the Wisdom Traditions.” The event will occur virtually and is limited to 12 participants.
This event is connected to a new project that Klemmer is currently developing: “A Personal Formation Journey for Adults.” The project includes A NEW Manual for Living, a short monograph that explains the elements of a journey toward goodness, flourishing, and building a life of meaning; Virtue through Wisdom, an accompanying text that provides a cross-mapping of the moral virtues from the world’s wisdom traditions; and, a retreat experience that integrates the readings and discussions.
Klemmer’s current work is intended to be practical, stemming from a frustration that he felt while studying applied ethics. “I am very unlikely to be standing at a railroad switch with five people on one track and one person on the other and the switch in my hand,” said Klemmer. “Like so many others, I feel like I live in the everyday world, where moral dilemmas include simpler, smaller events like how to treat with dignity someone I just don’t like or the decision to return money to the cashier who overpaid me.”
Klemmer’s professional career includes significant experience in adult learning and teacher formation. Further explaining the roots of his current project, Klemmer said, “A final stimulus for this work was the void in specific programming for adults to examine these fundamental questions about moral goodness, human flourishing and a life of meaning.If they were not exploring these questions for themselves, how could they possibly help others, like students, in their own journeys?”
Klemmer holds degrees from the Harvard Business School, the Wharton School, and Salve Regina University. He is an experienced facilitator of discussion-based learning and serves as a moderator for the Aspen Institute Global Leader Network. Klemmer has also been a Lecturer in Management at Yale University’s School of Management, and taught Production and Operations Management in the MBA program at Babson College, while helping develop entrepreneurship course materials there. Klemmer serves as the Senior Advisor to the Center for Equity in Urban Education at Elms College, Chicopee, MA.
Saint Mary’s is excited that Klemmer agreed to facilitate this seminar for faculty and staff. Klemmer said, “I come into this pursuit first and foremost as a traveler on my own personal formation journey, a journey that has lasted for decades and one I suspect that will take me to the end.”