Jon Olsen

Jon Berndt Olsen is dean of Waldsee, the German Language Village, during the first half of the summer. Olsen has been on staff at Concordia Language Villages since 1987 and was a villager at both the German and Norwegian Language Villages. He is fluent in German and has studied Norwegian and Russian.

Berndt received his bachelor's degree in German, Russian studies, and history from St. Olaf College, his master's degree in German and European studies from Georgetown University and his doctorate in German history from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

He has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Commission, the Robert Bosch Foundation and the Social Science Research Council. Olsen is an assistant professor in the department of history at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he teaches courses in German and European history as well as public history and new media.