Dr. Hans Jürgen Hoyer serves as the Executive Secretary of the Global Engineering Deans Council (GEDC) and the Secretary-General of the International Federation of Engineering Education Societies (IFEES). Additionally, Dr. Hoyer is a Resident Scholar in Global Engineering at the Volgenau School of Engineering at George Mason University, Global Visiting Professor at the University of Maryland BC, and co-founder of the Indo-Universal Collaboration for Engineering Education (IUCEE).
Dr. Hoyer initially became involved with IFEES and the GEDC when he served as the Director of international Programs and Strategy for the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). He is co-founder and advisor of the African, Asian, and Latin American Engineering Deans Councils; works closely with over fifty engineering education societies globally and enjoys a close partnership with the World Bank in regards to their activities in Africa; with UNESCO where he serves on their Advisory Council; and also the OAS. He also works in close partnerships with over 10 international, multi-national corporations including Airbus; Siemens; Dessault Systemes; National Instruments; Mathworks; Quanser; Liaison; Granta; Phoenix.
Prior to 2006, Hans J. Hoyer was CEO of World Links, a spin-off of the World Bank. In this capacity, he worked globally on issues related to secondary education, teachers’ education, and on-line collaborative learning focusing on science; IT and social studies among high school students across the globe. Dr. Hoyer has led several international development programs, including CARE, Plan International, and Heifer International. In these latter roles, he held executive leadership positions such as Senior Vice President/Chief Operating Officer, and Regional Executive and was responsible, among others, for a large number of staff and for raising financial resources from a multitude of donors including government agencies, the World Bank, IAB, several foundations, corporations, and private donors. He also represented the largest U.S. farming membership association as a spokesperson at the European Union and European Parliament in Brussels and also represented them in Mexico and Central America.
Dr. Hoyer has served with Nelson Mandela on the board of directors of El Taller, a global civil society network headquartered in Tunisia as well as on several social-action community groups. He was also on the staff of the Inter-American Foundation, created by the U.S. Congress to support socio-economic development throughout Latin America/Caribbean. He was on Hewlett Packard’s e-Inclusion Global advisory board related to their scientific and engineering work in South Africa and founding member of the Board of the Engineering for the Americas (EftA) initiative under the umbrella of the OAS.
He currently serves on the Governing Board of the International Center for Engineering Education/UNESCO/ Tsinghua University; Strategic Advisory Board of UNESCO’s second Ten Year Report on Global Engineering; as co-founder and Advisory Board member of the Indo-Universal Collaboration for Engineering Education (IUCEE) and Information Technology in Higher Education and Training (ITHET); and Global Advisor to SUSTech, Shenzhen, China, and Beihang University School of Engineering, China. He is the co-founder of SPEED, a global engineering student organization that conducts engineering student capacity building worldwide.
He has been, continues to be a keynote speaker for conferences globally focusing on engineering education and capacity building. Dr. Hoyer has been a Visiting Scholar at the Center for International Studies at MIT, a fellow at Harvard’s School of Education, and a visitor at the Kennedy School of Government. He was dean of the graduate program at the School for International Training, World Learning and Executive Director of the Executive Training Program for global governmental and NGO leaders in Brattleboro, Vermont. He also taught at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia and Montgomery College, Maryland, USA.
Presently, he is an Honorary Professor at universities in Hungary, India, Kazakhstan and Peru. Born in Germany, he immigrated to the United States of America as a teenager. He earned his Ph.D. at American University in Washington, D.C. As a post-doctoral fellow with the Organization of American States (OAS), Dr. Hoyer carried out research in the Rio de la Plata region of South America. He started his career as a Peace Corps Volunteer and high school teacher in Linares and Talca, Chile, and has lived in over twenty countries including India, Sri Lanka, Chile, Peru, Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay, Argentina, Mexico, South Asia, Belgium, Kenya, and Zimbabwe. Over his extensive career, he has visited 150 countries, is fluent in four languages, and conversant in additional five languages. Each of his four children was born in a different country. He has written and published on a broad range of subjects related to engineering education; international development, strategic planning; politics, health, and education
