Dr. Mihaly Sari
Hall of Fame Class of 2014
Dr. Mihaly Sari is a practitioner, researcher, and university instructor. His name is a hallmark for the university and research network on Hungarian adult education and for organizing practical adult learning. Among his greatest contributions include his numerous adult education affiliations and related activities, representing his way of connecting academic work with international cooperation and implementing these experiences in his social commitment and grassroots adult education activity.
Sari was an evaluation expert of applications at Socrates Foundation in Hungary and was president for five years in the Hungarian Folk High School Society. He is a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, serving on their subcommittee, and is vice president of their adult educational and social subcommittee and an expert committee member of Collegium Pontes in Görlitz University, Germany.
Sari has written and edited 11 books on the field of educational sciences, 137 research-articles (41 in foreign languages), and is an editorial board member of three scientific periodicals related to human sciences and adult education.
He was awarded Republic of Hungary’s Golden Civic Crown, the Comenius Award, by Olomouc University; received the Hungarian minister’s award three times; and has received the title of master of teachers and the Tutor of Pro Sciencia award. In addition to these honors, he has received eight scientific university scholarships in the field of adult education development.
As a member of the Andragogy School of Debrecen University, Sari had a significant role in Hungarian educational sciences by making a connection between different scientific approaches such as pedagogy-andragogy-gerontology. He developed the Hungarian concept of community development to make the theory more valuable and added a sociological approach to this work by introducing an action research method. He is the author of The City and Belonging Rural Area, which strengthened the interdisciplinary of cultural-sociology. He initiated a university course on criminal-andragogy, a specialization for training policemen, judges, lawyers, and prison guards. This initiative opened up new possibilities in the science of criminology. He introduced a new practice in theory of adult education, the historical-functional changes of the institutional system in culture, which enforced the viewpoint of economic sciences. He presented new results in his habilitation book, via integrating new elements of cultural history, which had not been presented previously.
Sari was the organizer of a series of conferences, which are considered valuable forums of historical studies of central European adult education. Through international conferences, Sari helped transfer values of adult training experiences into the Hungarian system and connected the country’s universities to the international network.
In addition to his academic research and teaching, he was also an active member of local adult education activities. He attended lectures in local community colleges in Pécsvárad and started a university-level student program. Essentially, he renewed the academic work and linked it to the social application in terms of initiating community education activities in rural areas.