Kate S. McCleary

About Me: Dr. Kate McCleary is the Evaluation Co-Lead (along with Dr. Elise Ahn) for the Open Society Foundations Scholarship Legacy Project (2022-2023), which examines the impact of 30+ years of individual grantmaking, which largely focused on post-Soviet and post-Socialist countries, as well as in the 2010s in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. In addition, she is the Associate Dean of High Impact Practices in the International Division. Previously, in her work with the School of Education, McCleary managed the day-to-day operations of the Global Engagement Office and offered support to departments, units, faculty, students and visiting scholars engaged in globally-focused work. McCleary was a key collaborator in the development of the School’s strategic plan for global education, and co-led the launch of the Global Engagement Office in 2018. She previously served as an Associate Researcher with the LEAD Center in the Wisconsin Center for Education research, and was the Director of Global Education at Washington College in Maryland. Her own research interests focus on gender, youth, and education. She worked on project teams in the U.S. that have collaborated with scholars, practitioners, youth, and communities in Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, Turkmenistan, and Uganda, and was a Fulbright Research Scholar to Spain. McCleary received her PhD in Comparative International Development Education from the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy and Development at the University of Minnesota. She did her MEd in Educational Leadership at Lehigh University, and has a BA in Spanish and History from Muhlenberg College.