Meet Dan

When I gave my Admissions pals their assignment to write about their summers for the blog, I gave Dan a different set of instructions:  to tell us about the roots of his international interests.  The rest of us wrote on that topic two years ago, and I wanted blog readers to have the same perspective on Dan.  Here’s what he wrote:

Unlike many families in Pennsylvania Dutch country, mine could not claim many generations of roots in the region.  My Canadian mother and New Englander father — both academics — landed there for professional reasons.  I grew up a Blue Jays fan in Phillies country, couldn’t stomach Lebanon bologna, and never celebrated Fasnacht Day.  From an early age I was fairly accustomed to traveling, and to thinking of the world as a much larger place than Berks County.  That upbringing surely helped me muster the courage to work on a rural development project in Mexico one college summer (my first real independent experience abroad), a program to which I would return twice more.  I was now well on my way to becoming a typically greedy internationalist, always craving experiences in new places with new people.  I spent several years administering high school foreign exchange programs, went back overseas as a Peace Corps volunteer to Ecuador, and eventually ended up at Fletcher as a MALD student.  The Fletcher experience was both intensely challenging and rewarding, so much so that I couldn’t quite bear to give it up.  I’m thrilled to remain an active member of the community, enjoying the truly global stage on which Fletcher operates, and working to make sure it stays strong into the future.