Dan Weilbaker
NIU’s Division of International Programs is recognizing Marketing Professor Dan Weilbaker as the Outstanding International Educator for 2007 for his contributions to international education through teaching, research, public service and student service.
Additionally, International Programs is honoring Political Science as the Outstanding International Department for 2007, recognizing its significant contribution to internationalization efforts across campus.
The award winners were named at an International Education Week reception last week.
Weilbaker initiated the first study abroad program in the Department of Marketing at NIU in 2001, when he created a sales-specific short-term program at the Dublin Institute of Technology in Ireland. The program has become reciprocal since then and was expanded to include the University of Applied Sciences in Austria. Students from both Ireland and Austria come to NIU in the summer for a short-term program in sales.
Additionally, Weilbaker established semester-long exchanges with both universities and is working to bring international faculty to NIU for visiting appointments. He has served as a visiting professor at universities in the United Kingdom and in Italy. Weilbaker also conducts research into selling across cultural boundaries and global account management.
“With these varied experiences abroad, Dan has infused international perspectives into the professional sales and marketing curricula in the College of Business, thereby helping his students who cannot study abroad to gain international understanding,” said Deborah Pierce, executive director of International Programs.
Faculty members in the Department of Political Science specialize in such topics as international security studies, the politics of Thailand and Indonesia and politics and development in the Muslim world. With graduate programs in Comparative Politics and International Relations, the department also attracts to campus strong scholars with international interests, including Department Chair Christopher Jones and Danny Unger as well as new hires Kikue Hamayotsu and Y.K. Wang.
“Because of the strong interests of department faculty throughout the years in international research, particularly Southeast Asian issues, the Department of Political Science played an active role in creating both the Center for Southeast Asian Studies and the Division of International Programs,” Pierce said. “The department continues to maintain productive connections to both groups.”
A number of political science faculty members have won Fulbright fellowships in recognition of their outstanding international research, including Daniel Kempton, Gregory Schmidt, Dwight King and Professor Emeritus Clark Neher. King currently serves as director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, a post formerly held by Neher.
Department faculty are becoming more active as well in study abroad, notably through the NIU at Oxford program and a new program for summer 2008, “The Political Economy of Thailand.”