Dawn M. Whitehead

Full Biography

Dr. Dawn Michele Whitehead is the Vice President of the Office of Global Citizenship for Campus, Community, and Careers at the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). Her work focuses on advancing practices and strategies to integrate global, civic, and experiential learning across curricular and co-curricular initiatives and practices that advance equitable participation in global and community-based learning for all for work, life, and citizenship. She works with institutions of all types on curricular and course development, curriculum internationalization, integrating global learning across disciplines, and curricular change. 

She is the director of AAC&U’s Institute on Engaged and Integrative Learning and co-director of the Institute on Teaching and Learning for Campus-Wide Interfaith Excellence in collaboration with Interfaith America. She serves as the program director of AAC&U’s Annual Meeting, drawing on the broader work of AAC&U and contemporary issues in higher education to create a compelling and timely meeting.

Dr. Whitehead has presented and published nationally and internationally on global learning, community engaged learning, curricular change, and engaged learning. She was named an inaugural member of the Institute for International Education’s National Academy for International Education. Whitehead also serves as vice chair of the board of directors for The Forum on Education Abroad. She holds a Ph.D. in Education Policy Studies with concentrations in African Studies and International and Comparative Education from Indiana University, Bloomington.

Before her work at AAC&U, Whitehead served as the Director of Curriculum Internationalization at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis where she also served as a faculty director for global service learning programs in Costa Rica, Ghana, and Kenya, taught Global and International Studies courses on campus and through real-time videoconferencing, facilitated the development of internationalized curriculum, global service learning, and international partnerships.