Christopher Deal, Ph.D. has been working in intercultural communication and education since 1993 as a teacher, trainer, consultant, videographer, university lecturer, professional speaker, researcher, and manager. He holds a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of New Mexico, USA and an M.A. in International Communication from American University in Washington, DC, with both degrees focusing on Intercultural Communication. His areas of specialization include intercultural and cross-cultural training, instructional design, training design, training across cultures, communicating with the Chinese, video production, intercultural communication in film and TV, and organizational communication.
Christopher has extensive experience managing and conducting training programs in both business and academic settings. His clients have included DuPont, Ericsson, Seagram, Philips, AIG, Eli Lilly, Scott Paper, Alstom, Wyeth, Maersk, Crown Worldwide, Tesco, Louisiana Tech University's Center for Educational Excellence, the University of New Mexico's Health Sciences Center, the Taipei City Government, and the University of Southern California. He has trained more than 100 trainers and has trained or taught people from 40 countries.
He has presented at numerous conferences, including the SIETAR (Society for Intercultural Education, Training, and Research) Global Congress in Granada, Spain, SIETAR-USA, National Communication Association, Western States Communication Association, and the University of New Mexico's Culture and Communication Conference. His work has also been featured in China’s largest English language newspaper, China Daily (click here to access a copy of the article).
Christopher served as Intercultural Communication Lecturer at California State University, Fullerton (CSUF). There he taught large lecture sections (70-100 students) of Intercultural Communication, incorporating interactive, experiential methods into his classes. During his time at CSUF, his work was featured in The Daily Titan newspaper (click here to access a copy of the article). He served as President of SIETAR-USA from 2013 to 2014 and served on the SIETAR-USA Board of Directors for 10 years.
In Taiwan, Christopher taught at Soochow University and St. Mary's University of Minnesota's Masters of International Business Administration (MIBA) program in Taipei and trained at the Community Services Center in Taipei. In the USA, he taught at the University of New Mexico's Department of Communication & Journalism and Center for the Advancement of Scholarship in Teaching and Learning (CASTL), including a course he designed called "Intercultural Training." Christopher also co-taught the Process of Change course in the Master of Arts in Intercultural Relations (MAIR) program offered through the Intercultural Communication Institute (ICI) in Portland, Oregon and the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California.
Since 2016, Christopher has been teaching various communication courses at Louisiana Tech University’s School of Communication in the Department of Communication & Media Studies. He enjoys creating new interactive classroom activities and sharing those activities with other teachers. He also serves as Mentor in the Mentoring Program of Young SIETAR (Society for Intercultural Education, Training, and Research).
A native of and current resident of the USA, Christopher has lived and worked abroad for a total of five years in Taiwan, the UK, and Spain, has traveled in 26 countries, and speaks Mandarin Chinese. He has also studied German, Japanese, and Russian at the university level. Earlier in his career, he served in both the British Parliament and the U.S. Senate as a research assistant and intern.
Of personal interest: Christopher is originally from Ruston, Louisiana. His likes practicing and studying Chinese language and philosophy; reading and writing both nonfiction and fiction works; studying, making, and watching films and videos; and studying and discussing astrophysics, cosmology, and related sciences.