Richard Gaulton, a Cornell alumnus and scholar of Chinese politics, has been named director of Cornell Abroad. Gaulton succeeds Urbain DeWinter, who accepted a post this summer as international programs administrator at Boston University.

As director, Gaulton will administer study abroad programs for more than 500 Cornell undergraduates annually; manage university and consortium programs in Nepal, France, Spain, Sweden, Japan and the United Kingdom; and advise and support Cornell students who participate in non-Cornell study-abroad programs.

Gaulton comes to Cornell after seven years with the Institute for the International Education of Students in Chicago, where in his most recent post, senior program manager, he oversaw study abroad programs for undergraduate students and supervised programs in Australia, China, France, Italy, Japan and Russia.

Gaulton also served as American director of the Johns Hopkins University -- Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies, where he directed a bilingual graduate program in international relations, and Chinese and American studies for Chinese and U.S. students in Nanjing, China.

In addition to his administrative posts, Gaulton also held teaching positions at Johns Hopkins, Colgate University and the State University of New York at Plattsburgh. He was a visiting instructor in the Department of Government at Cornell in 1980.

He also has authored several papers on Chinese politics, which have been presented at various conferences in the United States and abroad.

Gaulton earned a bachelor's degree and a doctorate from Cornell in 1967 and 1981, respectively, and earned a master's degree from the University of Washington in 1968.