for Kane and DuPage Counties 1902
The Board of Education of Valley Lutheran High School, located in St
. Charles, IL had just been in been informed that they were losing their building, and when Mr. Libka was "called" to their Executive Director position for the newly formed Lutheran High School Association of Kane and DuPage Counties.
Many challenges were overcome as the high school and middle school programs were moved to the city of Elgin. The small school deployed hundreds of volunteers to manage annual dinner auctions, golf outings, walkathon, other operational fundraisers and an ambitious capital campaign which alone raised $2.5 million in private gifts and pledges.
Purchasing 33 acres in St. Charles, Mr. Libka worked with architects, the county, township and village to advance site planning and to secure a future for the Academy.
Walther Lutheran High School 1989
Returning from India with 60 videos and 2,000 transparencies, it seemed like a perfect match, when Mr. Libka was offered a call to teach comparative religion. He also taught psychology and honors psych, was Director of Guidance, International Exchange Programs, Summer School, Adult Education, and Coached Track and Cross-country.
Highlights included a student produced drug education video with for use in area middle schools. He trained the cross-country team in five states and took them to Nassau for the 500th anniversary of Columbus' voyage to America. The summer school offered innovative programs like video production, word processing, airbrush painting, and A Survey of Chicago Churches. Adult Education included training for church secretaries.
He left Walther when the Lutheran High School Association of Kane and DuPage Counties offered him their Executive Director position.
Harvard University / Smithsonian Institute 1988
Mr. Libka accepted an offer to set-up and direct the translation of a 1,000 page, 13th century manuscript written by Emperor Nizamudin's court poet, Amir Khusrau. It was deemed by the Smithsonian's Director of International Programs as, arguably, the most difficult translation in the history of the world. The author had written the work in five languages, and would change languages in mid sentence. Mr. Libka agreed to serve as Project Director for the first year of the decade long effort and set-up the project office in the Indian Institute for Islam Studies, now Jamia Hamdard University.
India provided an amazing setting where Mr. Libka visited religious centers, conversed with religious leaders including the Dalai Lama and staff of the Indian Institute for Islamic Studies. He worked closely with the highest ranking officials in the central government staff of Rajiv Gandhi, then Prime Minister of India, working also at that time with today's Prime Minister of India, VP Singh, then Minister of Finance. Singh is referenced in the book The World is Flat, where he is credited with opening up the Indian subcontinent for "off-shore" staffing and their high tech internet based labor force.
While circumnavigating the globe he also lectured and lead workshops on time management and team building. Mr. Libka conducted video taped interviews with corporate executives in Munich, Germany's Marienplatz, Champs de Mars at the base of the Eiffel Tower and in the Gardens of the Palais Royale in Paris, Jukaso Computer College in Mumbai, India and at the Headquarters of the All India Oil and Natural Gas Company in New Delhi.
The most unique workshop, captured on video tape, was presented on the porch of a rural development building in the village of Deoli, located in the Himalayan foothills of Northern India. Three translators interpreted Mr. Libka's discussion with villagers about goal setting with our children. The villagers reported that Mr. Libka, accompanied by his daughter, were the first visitors from the U.S. in the history of this remote outpost. Traveling by train through a terroist region, two buses, and then a tractor drawn cart up a dry river bed he wasn't surprised by the revelation that this was not a common tourist destination.
