Yong Zhao

Yong Zhao, PhD, is a Foundation Distinguished Professor of education at the University of Kansas and a professor of educational leadership at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education in Australia. Yong was presidential chair and director of the Institute for Global and Online Education in the College of Education at the University of Oregon and a professor in the Department of Educational Measurement, Policy, and Leadership. He was previously University Distinguished Professor in the College of Education at Michigan State University, where he was founding director of the Office of Teaching and Technology and the US-China Center for Research on Educational Excellence and executive director of the Confucius Institute. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Education and elected fellow of the International Academy of Education.

Yong is an internationally known scholar, author, and speaker whose works focus on the implications of globalization and technology for education. He has designed schools that cultivate global competence, developed computer games for language learning, and founded research and development institutions to explore innovative education models. The author of more than 100 articles and 30 books, he was named one of the 10 most influential people in educational technology in 2012 by the journal Tech & Learning.

Yong received a bachelor’s degree in English language education from the Sichuan Foreign Language Institute in Chongqing, China, and a master’s and doctorate in education from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

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