Dr. Mary McFarland is co-founder and past President/ International Director of Jesuit Worldwide Learning (JWL) Higher Education at the Margins (previously named Jesuit Commons: Higher Education at the Margins). As President, she developed an organization with a global team and led the design and implementation of a sustainable scalable, and transferrable model for higher education at the margins. She has taught on site in refugee camps and with internally displaced people in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. JWL has been recognized as a major global work of the Jesuits.
Prior to JWL Dr. McFarland was Dean of the School of Professional Studies at Gonzaga University. With a vision for serving adult students, Dr. McFarland led the addition of new programs, undergraduate though doctoral to the School, and led Gonzaga's entry into learning on-line. Ethical leadership, along with program development, policy design, and evaluation form the cornerstones of her career in higher education.
Policy work has included serving as an evaluator for the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU), and as Team Leader and evaluator for the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE). She has taught courses on leadership and policy to undergraduate through doctoral students.
She considers her own education a gift and is committed to the life-long learning that occurs when teaching and learning with students. Her education background includes a bachelor’s from the University of Iowa, Master’s from the University of Portland, and a PhD from Gonzaga University, Dr. McFarland has been a Robert Wood Johnson Fellow, and she holds an honorary doctorate from Regis University, Denver Colorado.
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