Faculty Directory
Gerardo L. Blanco
Academic Director, Center for International Higher Education
Associate Professor
Gerardo L. Blanco
Ed.D.
Contact
Campion Hall Room 207B
Telephone: 617-552-4236
Email: gerardo.blanco@bc.edu
ORCID 0000-0002-1577-3722
Education
- Ed.D., University of Massachusetts Amherst
- M.Ed, The University of Maine
- B.A., Universidad de las Américas, Puebla (Mexico)
Courses
Internationalization of Higher Education
Thesis Project
Summer Institute WES-CIHE
Research Interests
Gerardo's research interests include: educational leadership & policy, comparative & international education, quality assurance and higher education.
Expertise
- Comparative & International Education
- Equity and Social Justice
- Higher Education
Department
Biography
Gerardo L. Blanco is associate professor of Higher Education and academic director of the Center for International Higher Education. His research explores explores the intersections of quality and internationalization in higher education with a focus on accreditation, rankings and international assessments.
His research has been published in leading journals, such as Higher Education, Studies in Higher Education, the Comparative Education Review, and the Review of Higher Education. Gerardo has held leadership roles in the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES), and the Association for the Study of Higher Education's Council for International Higher Education and serves on several advisory and editorial boards. In 2017, he received the "Best Research Article Award" from the Comparative & International Education Society's Higher Education SIG. In 2014 and 2020, his work received honorable mentions from the same organization.
Dr. Blanco is the author (with Catherine Marshall and Gretchen B. Rossman) of Designing Qualitative Research 7th edition. He is also Fulbright Specialist and an advisor for programs and global initiatives at the American Council on Education (ACE).
GLOBAL SPOTLIGHT
- Selected as Fulbright Specialist, with assignment at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana Cali (Colombia)
- Advisory board member of the Inter-American Organization of Higher Education (OUI-IOHE)
- Served as advisor to the higher Education Commission of Pakistan
- Served as an Erasmus+ Fellow at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland
Selected Recent Publications
- Blanco, G. L., & Mutthana, A. (2022). Looking for Hope Abroad: The New Global University Beyond Neoliberalism. In S. Bengtsen & R. Gildersleeve (Eds.), The Transformation of the University: New academic realities, new institutional hope. Routledge.
- Blanco, G. L. (2021). Higher Education and The Enduring Value of Hospitality: Reflections for the 21st Century. In H. van’t Land, A. Corcoran & D. Iancu (Eds.), The Promise of Higher Education: Essays in Honour of 70 Years of IAU (pp.175-179). Springer. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-67245-4_27
- Buckner, E., Blanco, G. L., & Zhang, Y. (2021). The Impact of COVID-19 on International Student Enrollments in North America: Comparing Canada and the United States. Higher Education Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1111/hequ.12365
- Blanco, G. L. (2021). Global citizenship education as a pedagogy of dwelling: re-tracing (mis)steps in practice during challenging times. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 19(4), 432-442. https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2021.1899800
- Blanco, G. L., Rumbley, L. E., & de Wit, J. W. M., (2021). Rankings and internationalization: An unfortunate alliance. In E. Hazelkorn & G. Mihut (Eds.), Research Handbook on University Rankings: History, Methodology, Influence and Impact (pp.137-149). Edward Elgar.
- Colina, F. E., & Blanco, G. L. (2021). Accountability compliance, and student learning as competing rationales for assessment: A case study of US Tuning in practice. Tertiary Education and Management, 27(2), 129-142. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11233-021-09069-1
- Luu, D. H., & Blanco, G. L. (2021). Exploring U.S. federal policy discourse on refugee access to post-secondary education. Higher Education Policy, 34, 456-473. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41307-019-00144-2
- Blanco, G. L., & Metcalfe, A. S. (2020). Visualizing quality: University online identities as organizational performativity in higher education. Review of Higher Education, 43(3), 781-809. https://doi.org/10.1353/rhe.2020.0007
- Blanco, G. L., & Saunders, D. B. (2019). Giving account of our (mobile) selves: Embodied and relational notions of academic privilege in the international classroom. Teaching in Higher Education, 24(5), 666-677. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2019.1621281
- Blanco Ramírez, G., & Luu, D. H. (2018). A qualitative exploration of US institutional accreditation in three Canadian universities. Studies in Higher Education, 43(2), 989-1001. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2016.1203891
Fellowships & Grants Awarded
- Co-Principal investigator. “The Future of Internationalization Partnership.” $160,000 USD Partnership Development Grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada to facilitate collaboration among the Center for International Higher Education, the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and the International Association of Universities. (2021).
- Principal investigator. “Promoting Global Dialogue in the Classroom: Listening, Respect, and Cosmopolitanism.” $7,000 award from the University of Connecticut’s Thomas J. Dodd Research Center to explore the potential of intergroup dialogue in the context of global/international learning communities. (2019)
- Principal investigator. “Educational Reform and Inclusion in Vietnam and Thailand.” $5,000 award from the UMass Boston Office of Global Programs to facilitate a study tour of higher education institutions. (2017)
- Erasmus+ Teaching Fellowship. $8,000 to teach at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin (Poland) (2017)
- Principal Investigator. “Enhancing Higher Education Quality in Bangladesh: An Exploration of Institutional Responses to New Policy Developments” $5,000 award from the UMass Boston College of Education & Human Development to collect data on higher education policy in Bangladesh (2015)
- Principal investigator. “North-American Dynamics of Globalization in Higher Education: Collaboration, Competition and Position Taking.” $4,000 Award from the UMass Boston Office of Global Programs to collect data on accreditation practices in British Columbia, Canada. (2014)
- New Scholars Dissertation Fellowship. $2,000 from the Comparative & International Education Society (CIES) (2012)
- Principal Investigator. “U.S. Accreditation in Mexico Dissertation Research Grant.” $2,000 Award from the UMass Amherst Graduate School & Department of Educational Policy, Leadership & Administration to collect data on the implementation of US accreditation in Mexico. (2012)
Awards
- Best Research Article Award—Honorable Mention, Comparative & International Education Society (CIES) Higher Education Special Interest Group (2020)
- Best Research Article Award, Comparative & International Education Society (CIES) Higher Education Special Interest Group (2017)
- Best Dissertation Award—Honorable Mention, Comparative & International Education Society (CIES) Higher Education Special Interest Group (2014)
Lynch School expert shares insights on international student visas
Associate Professor Gerardo Blanco comments to WGBH about 17 current and former international students from Harvard and UMass whose visas were revoked in April: “The changes are unprecedented and represent a new breakdown in communication between the government and higher education.”
The implications of a Fulbright freeze
In the midst of federal budget cuts to the U.S. Department of Education, Gerardo Blanco and alumna Marisa Lally, Ph.D. ’24 (Higher Education), contributed an opinion piece about the Fulbright Program budget freeze in Times Higher Education. Their piece emphasizes the importance of the program, which they say has always been “bipartisan,” in fostering international academic exchange.
A “chilling” time in higher education
In University World News, Associate Professor Gerardo Blanco and alumnus Haishan (Sam) Yang, M.A. ’19 (Higher Education), write about the higher education climate, which they describe as “chilling.” Their opinion piece discusses international student visas, funding cuts, and campus free speech.