I’ve come to realize how much geography defines me, how much I trace my life along a meandering line of places: the Bronx of my birth and toddler years; the wondrous, tumultuous years of elementary and high school on the Jersey Shore; college in Maine and Japan; Peace Corps service in Korea; graduate school in Ohio; a year on a West Virginia commune; and jobs in Hawaii, Missouri, Virginia, New York, and Washington, DC, where I’ve mostly resided since 1978. Retired now, I write–no longer the academic and professional articles, books, and reports of my work years, but prose and poetry centered primarily on place.
Those are the broad strokes. Here are some biographical details.
In 1946, when I was two, my family moved from the Norwood section of the Bronx to the small, seaside town of Belmar, New Jersey. I attended Belmar Grammar School from kindergarten through 8th grade, then went to nearby Asbury Park High School from 1958 to 1962. I studied at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, where I earned a B. A. in philosophy in 1966 after spending my junior year as a university exchange student in Tokyo, Japan. After Bates, I taught for two years in Korea with the first group of U.S. Peace Corps volunteers to that country. From 1968 to 1971 I was, consecutively, cross-cultural training coordinator, project director, and training officer at the University of Hawaii’s Center for Cross-Cultural Training and Research, which prepared prospective Peace Corps volunteers for service in Asia and the Pacific. In 1971, I went to Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio and received a Ph.D. in organizational behavior in 1975. Concurrently, I had two years of training at the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland.
After graduate school, I was associate in organizational psychology at the Center for Planned Change in St. Louis, Missouri providing organizational development, training, and research help to private, not-for-profit, and public sector organizations. Then I took a break from my career to spend a year at the Claymont Society for Continuous Education in Charles Town, West Virginia, a school and community organized around the philosophy and personal-development system of G. I. Gurdjieff and P. D. Ouspensky. After Claymont, I spent two years working for think tanks, first as senior scientist at General Research Corporation in McLean, Virginia, where I evaluated Federal government-funded training programs for the U.S. departments of Education and Justice, and then at A. L. Nellum & Associates in Washington, DC as principal investigator for a project evaluating Peace Corps training programs in Nepal, Malaysia, the Philippines, Fiji, Tonga, and Western Samoa.
From 1982 to 1994, I worked for Youth For Understanding (YFU) International Exchange, one of the oldest and largest international homestay programs for teenagers, with national organizations in more than 50 countries since its founding in 1951. I held a succession of staff positions at YFU’s International Center in Washington, DC, including program officer for Asia and the Pacific, director of Educational and Program Services, (founding) director of the International Secretariat, and vice president for International Services. I extended my involvement with YFU until 2010 as a volunteer, serving as chairman of the world-wide YFU organization’s International Advisory Council; chairman of YFU International Educational Services, Inc.; and acting chairman of YFU USA, Inc.
From 1994 to 2005, I was dean of Global Studies, (founding) director of the Sondhi Limthongkul Center for Interdependence, and from 2002-2004 acting vice president for Academic Affairs at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York, where I was elected dean emeritus in 2006. For the next five years I was scholar-in-residence at American University’s School of International Service, where I also served as director of the Intercultural Management Institute and, upon retiring from the full-time faculty in 2010, chairman of the Intercultural Management Institute’s Advisory Council. Over the years, in addition to Hartwick and American, I have taught at the Stanford Institute for Intercultural Communication in Palo Alto, California, the Portland Institute for Intercultural Communication in Portland, Oregon, and Sookmyung University in Seoul, Korea.
My teaching, research, and community service have focused primarily on international education and intercultural relations. I have held appointments as consulting editor of the International Journal of Intercultural Relations, editorial board member of the Intercultural Management Quarterly, Fellow of the International Academy for Intercultural Research, listee on the roster of Senior Fulbright Specialists, and chairman of the Japan Task Force as well as executive committee member of the Alliance for International Educational & Cultural Exchange. I have been fortunate to have my research, evaluation, and program development efforts supported by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Henry Luce Foundation, the Japan Foundation, the Asia Foundation, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the United States Information Agency, the U. S. Office of Education, and the U. S. Department of Justice, among others.
Throughout my career, I have provided consulting services in program development, organizational development, training, and evaluation for a range of organizations in governmental, not-for-profit, educational, and corporate sectors in the U.S. and abroad.
My longest-standing interests include travel, reading, walking, friends, and family–wife Forrest, daughters Elizabeth and Katherine, and grandchildren Aurelie, Wilhelmina, Frida, and Isobel. I was very involved in Taekwondo, Kyudo, and Morris Dance at one time or another. Qi Gong and meditation now take up part of each day. My wife and I have rarely been without a dog in our 40 years of marriage. We’re dog-less at the moment but expect that won’t last long.
David Bachner 