PHILSON NAMED AS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMS

R. Michael Philson has been named executive director of Old Dominion University's Office of International Programs.

An international educator with faculty and administrative experience in the United States, Fiji, Thailand, Taiwan, Korea and Japan, he most recently served as executive director of international education at Wichita State University.

Philson succeeds John Heyl, who retired last year, and will assume the position Jan. 25.

"Mike has a great deal of international experience and has been an excellent director of the program at Wichita State," said Provost Thomas Isenhour. "He is an innovator and a doer. We look forward to new major initiatives for international education and research under Mike's leadership."

Philson joined WSU in 2001, where he oversaw all aspects of international education. His responsibilities included the recruitment and advising of international students, study abroad for U.S. students, international exchange agreements, and university policies relating to international education.

While there, he initiated exchange agreements with universities in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Austria, Germany, Mexico and Japan, and established international travel grants to support faculty development and international initiatives.

WSU serves approximately 1,300 international students.

From the time Philson embarked on his first position overseas in 1977 as a Peace Corps volunteer in Fiji, virtually all of his professional experience has focused on international education. He has lived more than a dozen years in Asia and the Pacific, and served as president of a two-year college, Japan's Kanda Institute of Foreign Languages, from 1999 to 2001.

Philson holds a doctorate in higher education administration, with a focus on international education and technology in education, from the University of Michigan (1999). He earned master's degrees in 1983 and 1977, respectively, from the University of Hawaii at Manoa (English as a second language) and the University of Wisconsin (journalism and mass communication). He received a bachelor's degree in political science in 1972 from Washington University in St. Louis.