John C. Weidman grew up in the "Pennsylvania Dutch Country" of Lancaster County where he attended public schools. Later he studied at Princeton University and the University of Chicago where he earned a doctoral degree in the sociology of education. His first international experience was as a "Werkstudent" in Germany while an undergraduate. As a graduate student, Weidman's dissertation research on undergraduate career socialization was decidedly domestic but his adviser's office was next door to the Comparative Education Center and C. Arnold Anderson was a member of his dissertation committee, so a bit of a comparative perspective apparently "rubbed off!"

After a stint as a faculty member in the Social Foundations of Education at the University of Minnesota, he moved to Washington, DC, where he worked for 18 months in a non-profit, policy research organization, the Bureau of Social Science Research, primarily on the evaluation of demonstrating manpower training programs. He moved to the University of Pittsburgh in January of 1979 with primary responsibility in the Higher Education Program. In 1986, Weidman became chair of the Department of Administrative and Policy Studies which included the International Development Education Program (IDEP).

In 1986-87, during a Fulbright at Augsburg University in Germany he began his first international research, focusing on the German "dual system" of vocational training. After his return to Pittsburgh, a comparative dimension was added as he contrasted his German experience with what was going on in the USA concerning school-to-work transitions. This interest continued intermittently and he is currently working with a former graduate student on a comparative study of transition into post-high school education and/or employment based on surveys of youth in Essen, Germany, and Pittsburgh.

Seth Spaulding was relentless in urging him to spread his comparative wings, drawing him into a UNESCO forum on higher education research in developing countries that was piggy-backed onto the 1991 CIES Conference in Pittsburgh. In 1993, Spaulding pulled him into a project on higher education reform in Mongolia that has continued in several manifestations over the past decade and led to a number of publications. Because of Mongolia's social and political links to the Newly Independent States of Central Asia, it also led to project work and two pending publications on educational reform in that region. In 1993, Weidman was also introduced to higher education in Kenya through appointment to a UNESCO Chair in Higher Education Research at what has become Maseno University. This, too, resulted in a series of projects and research on higher education reform in both Kenya and South Africa.

Weidman takes his work with students very seriously and prides himself on having mentored a number of both domestic and international scholars with whom he has worked. With former graduate students, he has co-edited a book on higher education in Korea and co-authored a monograph on the socialization of graduate and professional students in higher education. He has been attending and contributing to CIES conferences as often as possible since 1986, including the 2002 northeast regional conference. In 2002, he served as Vice Chair of the Program Committee for the New Orleans CIES Conference and is currently Chair of the CIES Finance Committee. He is also an Assistant Editor of the Comparative Education Review. He is committed to working to assure a firm financial footing for CIES, to maintaining a high level of discourse among members that welcomes multiple perspectives and values diversity, and to encouraging increased integration of graduate students into the life of the organization.