Val Rust (1934 - )
Short Biography & Significant Contribution
Val Rust is a professor in the Social Sciences and Comparative Education Department at University of California Los Angeles where he is presently the head of the Social Sciences and Comparative Education division. He did his doctoral work at the University of Michigan, studying with Claude A. Eggertsen, where he completed his PhD in 1967. His academic career has been devoted to comparative education and international education. In his comparative education work, he has both challenged and supported the claim that schools conform to larger social forces. He advocates that schools can be a vital force in social, political, and economic change, as well as a force resisting change. Rust is well known in the field of comparative education. More precisely his research addresses the politics of educational reform, institution building, leadership in higher education, study abroad, and ethnic issues in international perspectives.
His scholarship concentrates mainly on Europe, such as Germanic Europe, including East and West Germany and Norway. Since the collapse of the former Soviet Union, Rust has spent considerable time working in Eastern Europe, in countries such as Azerbaijan. Beyond research, his work in the region reflects a life-long concern for the purposes of international educational development. In Azerbaijan, for example, he has been affiliated with a new university, Khazar University, a novel attempt to establish a Western higher education model in that region. His work in Azerbaijan further includes work with UNESCO on national curriculum development. Development interests have taken him to countries around the globe. He has spent 15 years in Indonesia working with a World Bank project helping to develop teacher education institutions. In addition, Rust worked extensively in Norway with Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on a project that had setup the International Management Training for Educational Change (IMTEC), where he engaged in institutional development activities. Following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, he spent a year as a Fulbright fellow at Humboldt University, study causal factors for the regime's collapse in the German Democratic Republic.
Rust has extensive experience in study abroad programs. He came into the field of comparative and international education through his work with study abroad programs, initially with the Experiment in International Living program. His initial experience was with a group of university students in West Berlin in 1961 (the year the Berlin Wall went up). While in Germany, Rust oversaw a junior year abroad program for Dartmouth University students. His first university appointment was at the University of Hawaii, where he was actively engaged with a Teacher Exchange Program that brought US social studies teachers to Honolulu for a year to work with social studies teachers from Asia. After joining the faculty at UCLA in 1969, he became the country director of the Education Abroad Program in Göttingen Germany, where he lived from 1975 to 1977. In 1998 he became the UCLA campus director of the Education Abroad Program (EAP), and he now heads the International Education Office, which houses all the study abroad programs on campus.
Educational Background
Postdoctoral Studies, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway (1978)
Research Fellow, Deutsches Institut für Internationale Pädagogische Forschung (1966)
Ph. D., Education, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, (1967)
Professional Background
Murray School District, Utah, Teacher (1958-60)
Salt Lake City School District, Utah, Teacher, (1961-62)
University of Hawaii, Professor, (1967-1969)
University of California, Los Angeles. Professor, (1969-present)
Awards
Honorary Doctorate, Khazar University, Baku, Azerbaijan (1998)
Smith-Petit Best First Book Award from the Mormon History Association (2005)
Affiliations (associations, organizations, institutions)
Comparative and International Education Society (US)
Selected Publications
Rust, V. (2004): Radical Origins: Early Mormon Converts and Their Colonial Ancestors. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Rust, V. (2003): "Educational Reform in Western Europe" Education Encyclopedia. New York: Macmillan.
Rust, V. (2003): "Minority Education Policy in Azerbaijan and Iran" Journal of Azerbaijani Studies, vol. 5, no. 1.
Rust, V. (ed)(2003): Dictionnaire d,éducation comparée (Dictionary of Comparative Education), Paris: L, Harmattan.
Rust, V. (2002): "The Meanings of the Term Comparative in Comparative Education" World Studies in Education, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 53-68.
Rust, V. (November, 2001): "Shifting Perspectives on Comparative Research" Comparative Education, vol. 37, no. 4, 501-506.
Dalin, P., Rust, D. V. & Rust D. V. (1996): Toward Schooling for the Twenty-First Century. New York: Continuum Intl Pub Group.
Rust, V. (ed.)(1995): International Perspectives on Education and Society: Educational Reform in International Perspective 199. New York: JAI Press.
Rust, D. R., Rust D. & Rust D. V. (1995): The Unification of German Education. New York: Routledge.
Rust, V. D., Knost, P., & Wichmann J. (Eds.) (1994): Education and the Values Crises in Central and Eastern Europe. New York: Peter Lang Pub Inc.
Rust, D. V. & Dalin, P. (1990): Teachers and Teaching in the Developing World. New York: Taylor & Francis.
Rust, D. V. (1989): The Democratic Tradition and the Evolution of Schooling in Norway. New York: Greenwood Pub Group.
Lawson, F. R., Rust, D. V. & Shafer, M. S. (eds.) (1987): Education and Social Concern: An approach to Social Foundation . New York: Prakken Pubn.
Rust, D. V. (1984): Education in East and West Germany: A Bibliography. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc.
Created: 3/14/2008
Updated: 3/17/2008
Contributed By: Ligia Toutant, UCLA
