ST. PAUL, Minn. — Hamline University has announced that Lisbon resident Bob Packard was honored with the “Making the World a Better Place Award” at Hamline’s 2011 Reunion Weekend. Packard is a 1966 graduate of the Hamline University College of Liberal Arts.
The “Making the World a Better Place Award” is given each year to a graduate of Hamline University College of Liberal Arts who has made the connection between learning theory and practice in connecting the liberal arts education to his/her profession and work within the community. This person is ethical and caring and serves society.
Packard received his bachelor of arts in Spanish and French and a minor in Latin American studies from Hamline University in 1966. He went on to study Spanish at Boston University and taught Spanish and French in Connecticut public schools for 35 years.
While teaching, Packard was also director of the World Citizen Forum Project for 32 school districts in southeastern Connecticut. A highlight of his work was arranging the first formal contact between the United Nations Ambassadors of Egypt and Israel and 200 Connecticut social studies teachers. Packard later testified before a U.S. presidential hearing on the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to teaching foreign languages and social studies.
These ideas were implemented through the World Citizen Forum Project with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Connecticut Department of Education.
Since retiring from teaching in 2004, Packard and his wife Ella Mae Littlefield moved to his wife’s family farm in Lisbon. The Packard-Littlefield Farm is under a permanent conservation easement which allows farming, forest products and open spaces. Since 2007, their farm has hosted refugees from Somalia, Sudan, Uganda and Guatemala to be trained on how to grow crops organically in a cold climate. Currently 50 refugee families participate and are in the process of being certified by the Maine Organic Farmers Association.
The Packards have two daughters and four grandchildren. They have traveled extensively in retirement, most recently to Brazil and Argentina, on an agricultural tour.
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