About the Vice Provost
Dr. Sabine Klahr is the Interim Vice Provost for Penn State Global, a comprehensive global office leading and facilitating global engagement across all 24 campuses of The Pennsylvania State University. Previously, she served as the Associate Vice Provost for Penn State Global since July 2022. Penn State Global includes: Global Learning; International Student and Scholar Advising; Global Partnerships and Agreements; Global Outreach, Development, and Alumni Relations, Marketing and Communications, Global Safety, as well as Business, Finance, and Application Development units. The 90 international education leaders and professionals of Penn State Global support the university’s land-grant mission by infusing a global dimension and intercultural perspectives in research, teaching, and outreach, thereby raising the institution’s global profile.
Klahr has 25 years of experience in advancing global engagement of higher education. Prior to Penn State, she served as Associate and Acting Chief Global Officer at the University of Utah for 11 years. She began her career in international higher education working in education abroad and subsequently served as senior international officer at several universities. Klahr has a long history of leadership for international education associations and organizations, culminating in serving as President of the Association for International Education Administrators (AIEA), the preeminent organization for leaders in international higher education, in 2013. She regularly contributes to the field of international higher education via publications, presentations at conferences, and as a consultant assisting universities with developing internationalization strategies.
Klahr’s achievements include securing federal and other grants to develop international area and language studies, global partnerships, and student mobility programs for underrepresented students. She has led the development of university-wide internationalization strategies and established successful initiatives to integrate global and intercultural learning outcomes and assessment across the curriculum. Beyond overseeing comprehensive global offices, her focus has been on broadening access to global learning opportunities for all students, developing intentional and strategic global partnerships, faculty global engagement and development, and the integration of global perspectives and programs in institutional priorities and functions.
In 2016, Klahr received a distinguished professional achievement award from AIEA for her service and leadership in international education. Fulbright Awards took her to India in 2011 and Norway in 2018. While completing her doctorate, Klahr was invited to conduct research at the University of Waikato, New Zealand.
Originally from Germany, Klahr earned Bachelor and Master of Science degrees, in botany/plant ecology, from the University of Oklahoma, as a first-generation and international student. Subsequently, she earned a teacher certification credential via an experiential education program from the University of Colorado, Boulder. After working in outdoor and secondary science education for several years, she completed a doctorate in education leadership focused on international higher education from Montana State University-Bozeman. Her dissertation research focused on internationalizing engineering education.
