Waissi joins ASU Global as associate vice president

Gary Waissi, former dean of the School of Global Management and Leadership, has joined ASU Global, the Office of the Vice President for Global Engagement, as an associate vice president, effective Nov. 10.

Waissi will work closely with the Office of the Provost and academic units on global academic programming, assisting with development of specialized programs to enhance the number and quality of international students and scholars coming to ASU, thereby assisting in the area of strategic global partnerships. He will work to identify ASU strengths in order to integrate those capacities across units and help to develop and customize academic programs in support of the challenges and strategic global outcomes defined by ASU Global and the university’s broader institutional priorities.

“I am pleased to join the ASU Global team at a time when the university is both positioning itself as a highly competitive international institution, and at the same time strengthening the global culture across ASU’s campuses,” says Waissi. “I look forward to building on relationships I’ve established in order to continue advancing the university’s reputation as a global focus for academic excellence, cross-cultural understanding and economic development and entrepreneurship.”

Waissi came to ASU in 2006 from the University of Michigan – Dearborn, where he served as dean of the School of Management and, earlier, chair of the Department of Management and as a faculty member. Waissi has worked projects for the University of Michigan’s William Davidson Institute; the International Business School in Tashkent, Uzbekistan; the Banking Institute, L’vov, Ukraine; and the School of Finance and Banking, Kigali, Rwanda. Prior to coming to Michigan, he worked for Philipp Holzmann AG in Frankfurt am Main, Germany and in Nigeria.

“Expanding ASU’s reach to the international student and scholar community is a vital component of our effort to bring greater global awareness to ASU campuses,” says Anthony “Bud” Rock, ASU’s vice president for global engagement. “Gary understands this well, and has direct experience in developing these types of programs. He will work with academic units on a full range of creative ways to connect this international community with ASU’s priority programs.”

Waissi speaks five languages – English, Finnish, German, Russian and Swedish – and earned his doctorate in engineering, with an emphasis on operations research, from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

He is a member of the Arizona Consular Corps, and in Michigan he served as the Honorary Consul of Finland.