Daniel Gerbatch has been named assistant director for admissions and recruitment at the Virginia Tech Language and Culture Institute.

In the newly created position, Gerbatch will be responsible for administering and coordinating the conditional admission program for the institute. Through this program, students who otherwise meet Virginia Tech admission requirements but do not meet the minimum English language requirements and may not yet have taken the SAT are offered conditional admission status at the university pending their successful completion of English and test requirements.

He also will help develop and execute international recruitment plans to attract an academically talented and diverse student population to the institute and Virginia Tech.

Gerbatch comes to Virginia Tech from Northeastern University, where he was assistant director of international admissions. Before that, he spent nearly five years in China learning Mandarin and working as a translator and business consultant.

“Daniel’s global experiences and academic background will enable the Language and Culture Institute to continue to help Virginia Tech attract the best and brightest international students, scholars, and professionals,” said Don Back, director of the institute.

Gerbatch lived in St. Petersburg, Russia, until he was 14, when he was invited to be a visiting high school student in Roanoke, Va., where he’d end up living for the next decade.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in East Asian studies from Davidson College and a master’s degree in Chinese studies from Leiden University in the Netherlands.

With classrooms in Blacksburg and the greater Washington, D.C., area, the Language and Culture Institute serves international students and others with language-related programs and services for academic and professional development. The institute hosts more than 500 students per year from more than 50 countries. In the past year, the institute recruited in eight countries on behalf of the university.

Dedicated to its motto, Ut Prosim (That I May Serve), Virginia Tech takes a hands-on, engaging approach to education, preparing scholars to be leaders in their fields and communities. As the commonwealth’s most comprehensive university and its leading research institution, Virginia Tech offers 240 undergraduate and graduate degree programs to more than 31,000 students and manages a research portfolio of $513 million. The university fulfills its land-grant mission of transforming knowledge to practice through technological leadership and by fueling economic growth and job creation locally, regionally, and across Virginia.

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