Biography
Dan Waite is a scholar-practitioner and the Executive Director of the Rutgers Global – Center for Global Education and Rutgers Global – Study Abroad, which serves all campuses of Rutgers University, the State University of New Jersey. In this role, Dan leads strategic initiatives which seek to ensure that all Rutgers students have access to opportunities for global learning including international study, internships, service, and research. The Center has developed an award-winning portfolio of access-focused programming including Access the World, Passport to the World, and the Global Learning Staff Fellows Initiative.
Dan has 25 years of experience in international higher education, working at the intersection of a passion for experiential learning pedagogies and for creating transformative spaces where learning and community-building thrive across boundaries of difference. He has created study abroad programs in the Caribbean, Ghana, South Africa, China, and South Korea. Dan’s current research is focused on the history of black student-activists who studied abroad in 19th-century Europe and how a re-examination of the field’s roots might inform a contemporary reimagining of the education abroad field. His Global Learning Labs model of programming is designed to allow students and faculty to collaborate with peers around the world on ongoing research projects (Labs) that address grand global challenges.
Dan earned a Ph.D. in Social Sciences and Comparative Education at the University of California, Los Angeles, where his research focused on the sociology of higher education and emerging models of experiential learning. His master’s degree in Administration, Planning, and Social Policy at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education and Luce Foundation funded research explored the historic development of area studies programming in U.S. higher education. Dan has also studied and conducted research abroad in his home country of Antigua & Barbuda, as well as South Korea, and China.