Ed.D., FRSA
Chief Executive
The Observatory on Borderless Higher Education (OBHE)

Dr. Don Olcott, Jr. is Chief Executive of The Observatory of Borderless Higher Education (OBHE) in London.  Dr. Olcott leads The Observatory and on a variety of international research and partnership projects with UNESCO, the World Bank, the Commonweatlh of Learning, the European University Association, the United States Distance Learning Association, the European Distance Education Network, and others.  The Observatory has over 180 organisational members in 50 countries engaged in transnational higher education.

Dr. Olcott serves on the UK’s Council of Validating Universities (CVU), the Board of Directors of the University of London’s Distance Education Council, and the Board of the Open University.  Dr. Olcott is an elected Fellow of the UK’s Royal Society of the Arts (FRSA). Don is immediate past-president of the United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA) and currently serves as Chairman of the USDLA Board of Directors.

Dr. Olcott previously held senior leadership and faculty appointments with Western Oregon University, V-Campus Corporation, the University of Arizona, the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE), Oregon State University, the University of Missouri-Columbia and Western Washington University.

Dr. Olcott has over twenty-five years of public and private sector experience in the design, delivery, and evaluation of higher education continuing and distance education programs..  Dr. Olcott received the 1998 Charles Wedemeyer Outstanding Distance Learning Practitioner in North America award from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and The American Center for the Study of Distance Education.
 
Dr. Olcott  is a member of the Editorial Boards of the American Journal of Distance Education, Open Learning, the Journal of Continuing Higher Education,  Canadian Journal of Distance Education, India’s Open U. e-Learning Journal, the Distance Learning Report, and he previously served as Media Review Editor for The American Journal of Distance Education.   He has published extensively in the areas of leadership, faculty development for distance education, organizational change, and higher education policy. 

Dr. Olcott is a nationally and internationally known speaker and has consulted to colleges, universities, and corporations across the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom.  He was a 1993 graduate of Harvard University’s Institute for the Management of Lifelong Education, a 2005 graduate of UCEA’s Executive Leadership Academy at New York University, and was the founder of WICHE’s National Institute for the Management of Distance Education (MDE) in 1996 that ran annually for nine years. He received his bachelors and masters' degrees from Western Washington University and his doctorate in higher education leadership from Oregon State University.  Don’s personal interests include golf, music, languages, travel and history.

Dr. Don Olcott, Jr., Ed.D., FRSA
Chief Executive
The Observatory on Borderless Higher Education (OBHE)
Woburn House
20-24 Tavistock Square
London WC1H 9HF
+44 (0) 20 7380 6714
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7387 2655
Email: d.olcott@obhe.ac.uk
Mobile: 503-881-3184
URL: www.obhe.ac.uk