Dan Merson

Dan Merson is a doctoral candidate in Higher Education at Penn State. He primarily works on the NCAA-funded Student-Athlete Climate Study (SACS), a multi-institution project to assess student-athlete's perceptions and experiences regarding campus climate. He has also worked on two NSF-funded projects that explore the current state of engineering education. Dan transferred from the University of Michigan where he most recently worked at the National Forum on Higher Education for the Public Good on public scholarship, immigration, and educational attainment, as well as with Michigan's College of Engineering researching the success of community college transfer students. He has presented and published on student-athletes, student learning and development, engineering education, students’ use of technology, and student religiosity. His dissertation involves the critique of current theoretical conceptualizations of campus climate and the development of a quantitative scale to measure campus climate.

Dan received his M.A. in Higher Education at Michigan, his M.Ed. in College Student Personnel from Penn State, and his B.S. in Psychology from Kansas State University. Before beginning his doctoral program at Michigan, he worked for residence life, the dean of students, admissions, and two colleges of Engineering. His general research interests include campus climate, student learning and development, technology in higher education, and engineering education. In addition to academic fun he enjoys good food, live music and theater, science and science fiction, several racquet and ball sports, playing outdoors, and traveling.