Since becoming executive director of what is now the Frank J. Guarini Institute for International Education in January 2003, John Tansey estimates the office has sent between 12,000 and 14,000 Dartmouth undergraduates to study in more than 30 countries around the world.
“Since I’ve been in the office, we’ve run somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000 programs,” he says.
When Tansey retires this summer, he will leave behind an office that looks almost nothing like the one he joined. What was then the Office of Off-Campus Programs had a staff of three and relied heavily on faculty to manage the logistics of running programs overseas. Today, the Guarini Institute—widely regarded as a center of excellence within international higher education—has nine staff members, a portfolio of more than 70 programs, and a $9 million annual budget.
“John has led Guarini through an amazing transformation,” says Scott Pauls, interim dean of undergraduate education and professor of mathematics. “He has worked to both professionalize and enhance our study-away opportunities for students, leading to an almost unique set of offerings that merge the uniqueness of the Dartmouth experience with the opportunities afforded by immersion in a different place and culture.”
‘A graduate program in life’
Tansey’s path to international education was not a straight line. Born and raised in Windsor, Vermont, he first came to Dartmouth in 1987 in an entry-level research administration role. He worked his way up to an assistant director over nearly eight years and earned his Master of Arts in Liberal Studies degree along the way before leaving in 1995 to return to the Peace Corps.
He had first served as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Philippines after college where he met his wife. Later, with his young family in tow, he spent time in Uzbekistan, Bangladesh, and the Republic of Georgia.
He describes that stretch as a “graduate program in life,” an experience that shaped his thinking about what it takes to live, work, and learn in an unfamiliar place. The experience would serve as the foundation for how he ran the Guarini Institute.
When he returned to the Upper Valley in 2000 and joined Dartmouth’s Institute for Security Technology Studies, colleagues reached out to ask where they might advertise a job opening at what was then the Office of Off-Campus Programs. Tansey offered some suggestions, then sat with it for a couple of days. “I called back and said, ‘I might be interested in that position,’” he remembers.
Navigating a more complicated world
Tansey joined the office in the summer of 2001. Months later, 9/11 reframed what it meant to operate globally.
“You think about what it means to operate globally from a health, safety, and security perspective,” he says. “It becomes more complicated. Visa regimes, executing payments around the world, housing standards, transportation standards—much more of that has been professionalized and standardized, and our office plays a big role in making sure faculty and students have all of that in place.”
From 2019 to 2021, he led a comprehensive strategic visioning process that restructured the institute’s approach to off-campus programming. As that process was underway, COVID-19 suspended all programs in March 2020. Tansey served on Dartmouth’s COVID-19 Task Force and chaired its Travel Subcommittee, developing the protocols needed to eventually resume operations safely around the world.
Tansey also oversaw significant growth and innovation in the institute’s program portfolio. New foreign and domestic study programs launched, including programs with the Department of African and African American Studies in Accra, Ghana, and Paris, France, and the Department of Native American and Indigenous Studies in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Other programs were reshaped to serve broader audiences than those specifically focused on language study, like the Brazil Learning Immersion in São Paulo and Salvador, now run jointly by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Department of Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies.
Over the years, Dennis Washburn, a professor of comparative literature, Asian societies, cultures, and languages, and film studies, observed Tansey’s leadership from his vantage points as a faculty director, department chair, member of the Committee on Off-Campus Activities, and associate dean.
“John has consistently guided our off-campus programs with a steady hand and a clear vision of their value to a liberal arts education,” Washburn says. “Despite the challenges of establishing institutional and financial relationships around the globe—and the occasional world crisis here and there—his leadership has helped ensure that Dartmouth remains an institution committed to international exchange and cultural diversity.”
Starting with possibility
Nancy Canepa, associate professor of French and Italian, was on the hiring committee that brought Tansey into the role in 2003 and has directed more than 20 study away programs since. She recognizes Tansey as a crucial advocate for her Italian Full Immersion in Rome Experience program, supporting it from an early proposal to the successful program it has become.
“John has a wonderful ability to see the forest through the trees,” says Canepa. “He has been a model of ‘active listening,’ always considering in a fair-minded and non-judgmental way ideas and proposals and offering reasoned feedback, even when the ideas are a little out there!”
Trica Keaton, Evans Family Distinguished Professor, leads the Paris FSP, Afro/Black Paris: The African Diaspora in the City of Light. In dreaming up the program, she credits Tansey with helping give her vision “a place to grow and thrive.”
“From our first conversation, he didn’t begin with limits but with possibility,” says Keaton. “And then, with remarkable care, he helped make those possibilities real. His support was never abstract. It lived in the details—a thousand unseen details, borne of his deep institutional knowledge, his advocacy, and the often-invisible labor that elevates global programs and brings them to life.”
Giving back
Throughout his career, Tansey has worked alongside faculty members, staff across campus, and on-site partners around the world, including local faculty, homestay coordinators, and support staff who make the programs run. In the years leading up to his retirement, he has focused increasingly on mentoring his team and passing along the institutional knowledge built up over more than two decades.
“John has been an incredible mentor, colleague, and now friend,” says Megan Wood, deputy director of the Guarini Institute, who has worked alongside Tansey for the past eight years. “He has managed crises, conflict, and challenges with a steady presence and earned the admiration and respect of our field and the Dartmouth community. He has taught me—and more importantly shown me—that diplomacy, integrity, and trust are essential components of building strong relationships.”
When Tansey leaves Dartmouth, he will head back to Windsor, Vermont, where he lives in the house he grew up in with his wife of 39 years, and their three children and six grandchildren all close by. He’s also running for the Vermont state legislature, representing the Windsor-1 District.
“My hope is not to retire,” he says. “My goal is to leave Dartmouth and be very involved in my community.”
Meanwhile, more than 70 programs will keep running in more than 30 countries, sending Dartmouth students out into the world.
“His legacy,” Keaton says, “lives in the programs that he has cultivated and ushered into being, and the people whom he has empowered along the way.”
The Dartmouth community will celebrate John Tansey at a retirement party on Tuesday, June 9, from 3-6 p.m. Please RSVP if you plan to attend.