Rebecca Graves-Bayazitoglu named senior associate dean of the Office of International Programs

Rebecca Graves-Bayazitoglu, associate dean of the college and director of the McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning, has been named senior associate dean of the Office of International Programs (OIP) at Princeton University. She will start in her new role on July 1 and will report to Jill Dolan, dean of the college.

Graves-Bayazitoglu has worked at Princeton since 2003, including close to a decade as the founding dean of Whitman College. As director of the McGraw Center, she supported faculty members seeking to enrich their courses with new materials, methods or technologies. She also oversaw the center’s many programs and services in support of student learning and academic success — including tutoring, study halls and academic skills workshops.

“Rebecca’s long history on Princeton’s campus — as a director of studies, as the first dean of Whitman College, at the senior and extended deans’ tables, and as director of McGraw — will serve her well as she enters the complex and exciting terrain of undergraduate international study at Princeton,” Dolan said. “Her scholarship and her commitment to international engagement will complement the expertise of our OIP directors and staff.”

A graduate of Middlebury College, Graves-Bayazitoglu was selected for the Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Program in France prior to joining Princeton’s Department of French and Italian as a doctoral candidate. She received her Ph.D. from Princeton in 2002.

Graves-Bayazitoglu went on to teach literature, language and film at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and at Haverford College. She returned to Princeton in 2003 to join the residential college staff of Rockefeller College.

During her tenure in Princeton’s residential colleges, Graves-Bayazitoglu directed the humanities and social sciences program of the Freshman Scholars Institute and participated in several campus-wide committees, including the Steering Committee on Undergraduate Women’s Leadership and the Residential College Task Force. She became dean of Whitman College in 2007.

Graves-Bayazitoglu was named director of the McGraw Center and associate dean of the college in 2016. She recently staffed the Ad Hoc Committee on the Classroom Learning Environment and is an academic-athletic fellow for the women’s soccer team.

In addition, Graves-Bayazitoglu has worked as an affiliated faculty member of the Program in Journalism and as a tutor for the Princeton University Prison Teaching Initiative.

“Studying and working abroad were a crucial part of my education, and I very much look forward to working with my new colleagues in the Office of International Programs to make sure that every Princeton undergraduate has access to a significant international experience,” Graves-Bayazitoglu said. “In my view, international education is central to the mission of a liberal arts curriculum; engaging meaningfully with a different culture and language enables us to appreciate a diversity of perspectives, and allows us to reflect in new and nuanced ways on our culture of origin.”

Graves-Bayazitoglu will be responsible for executing the University’s vision for undergraduate, international programs and international experiential and immersive learning at Princeton. She will oversee programs including the Novogratz Bridge Year Program, international summer internship experiences, semester- and year-long study abroad opportunities, and post-graduate international fellowships.

The senior associate dean for international programs serves as the dean of the college’s primary liaison to the Provost’s Office of International Affairs and Operations and the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, and also creates strategic initiatives to build undergraduate interest in international learning experiences, particularly for populations that don’t historically participate in large numbers.

Katherine Stanton, senior associate director of teaching initiatives and programs for faculty, will be acting director of the McGraw Center while a national search for Graves-Bayazitoglu's successor begins in the fall semester.