Hillsboro, Kan., native and WSU political science graduate Mark Seibel ’86/89 has seen a good deal of the world in his work in the field of international relations.
Last December, Seibel, who entered the Foreign Service with the U.S. Department of State in 1991, was promoted to the Senior Foreign Service at the rank of counselor, a civilian diplomatic equivalent to the rank of brigadier general.
Now serving in the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, Seibel has been posted in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Japan, El Salvador, Canada, Cuba, Washington, D.C., and Russia, where he was consul and second secretary, chief of the Immigrant Visa Unit at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. Seibel’s Moscow posting wasn’t his first time in Russia: he had traveled to the Soviet Union in 1983 with a group of students led by Ken Ciboski, WSU associate professor of political science and a strong proponent of offering students exposure to different political systems and cultures.
The trip, Seibel explained in 2008, crystallized his desire to explore international relations as a career.
