Page 184 - Movers, Shapers, and Everything in Between: Influencers of the International Student Experience

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About the author
Rachael H. Merola was born November 18, 1983, in Nuremberg, Germany, and lived in Germany, Hawaii, Virginia, Texas, and New York while growing up. While an undergraduate at Tufts University, she studied abroad in Havana, Cuba, and experienced the transformative power of international education. After graduating, she moved to Barcelona, Spain to work at the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics. There, she found a passion for working in international education, in particular for understanding and optimizing the student experience.
Eager to expand her knowledge and research skills, in 2010 she obtained her Master’s degree in International Education Policy from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. She spent the next decade working in higher education research and practice, including roles at higher education consultancies and research institutes in London, New York, and Seattle, and as an international administrator at a large women’s university in Seoul, South Korea.
Driven to continue her research and contributions to the field of IHE, in 2017 she began her doctoral studies as a student in the Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences at the University of Groningen and as part of the Centre for Internationalisation of Education (CIE) at the University of Groningen, Campus Fryslan. The research in this thesis is the product of her time in the program.