Eric Benjaminson is Assistant Director of Study Abroad, responsible for general health & safety policy as well as overseeing Chicago’s direct enrollment programs in the UK/Ireland, Japan, and Austria and faculty-led programs in Dakar (African Civilizations) and Vienna (Western Civilization, Jewish Civilization). Eric came to Chicago in June 2018 from the University of Oregon, where he served as the Senior Adviser for Global Partnerships and managed Oregon’s partnerships with Gabon and Senegal. Eric’s first career was in the U.S. State Department where he served for 32 years, retiring in 2013 as the U.S. Ambassador to Gabon and concurrently to Sao Tome & Principe. He was posted in a number of countries, mostly in Africa and northern Europe. Eric has a B.A. (Honors) in History and an M.A in Russian History from the University of Oregon, and he speaks French and Russian. He is particularly proud of his stellar acting career – in 1978 he was an extra in the food fight scene in the classic higher education film Animal House. In high school, Eric was an exchange student in Amsterdam and he lived in Israel while his father was there on a research fellowship. Eric is married with two adult daughters and a son. In his free time, he and his wife Lara enjoy traveling, flying with his private pilot’s license, and exploring Chicago with their two very large retrievers, Sasha and Jackson.