Staff and Contributors

Darla Deardorff

Instructor

Dr. Darla K. Deardorff is Executive Director of the Association of International Education Administrators, a national professional organization headquartered at Duke University. In addition, she holds a nationally-elected position with NAFSA: Association of International Educators. She has worked in the international education field for over ten years and previously held positions at North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill where she has had experience in study abroad, international student services, cultural programming, and ESL teaching/teacher training. Most recently, she managed the Duke–UNC Rotary Center for International Studies in Peace and Conflict Resolution, one of only seven such centers in the world. She is also an ESL instructor and teacher trainer with over twelve years of experience and has lived, taught and worked in Germany, Japan, and Switzerland. Dr. Deardorff teaches cross-cultural courses at Duke University and she has conducted cross-cultural training for universities, companies, and nonprofit organizations. She has given invited talks at national and international conferences, including at a recent symposium in Japan and at a seminar in Germany. In addition to presenting at national and international conferences for the past decade, Dr. Deardorff has also served as a consultant on assessment and intercultural competence development to universities and non-profit organizations.

She is the recipient of numerous awards including the 2001 “Excellence in International Education” award for the state of North Carolina, 2003 “Alumnus of the Year” from her undergraduate alma mater as well as “Distinguished Alumnus of the Year” for the department at her graduate alma mater of North Carolina State University in 2006. She was named a Paul Harris Fellow by Rotary in 2003 and she is featured in The Secret of Their Success: How 33 Women Made Their Dreams Come True, Carolina Women’s Press, 2000.

Dr. Deardorff holds a master’s and doctorate from North Carolina State University where she focused on international education. Her dissertation was on the definition and assessment of intercultural competence and she has published several articles on this topic, including four more currently in publication. Her dissertation research has drawn national and international attention and her intercultural competence models developed through the research are being used by such organizations as the Bertelsmann Foundation in Germany and the Institute for Intercultural Communication in Portland, Oregon. She was recently nominated as a “Rising Star in Academia” for the Chronicle of Higher Education. Her research interests include intercultural competence, outcomes assessment, internationalization, teacher preparation, and learning styles in different cultures.