Dan Cornish is the Director of the Academic Skills, Community, Culture, and English Support for Success (ACCESS) Center at The Tianjin Juilliard School. This is Cornish’s second role in the school, the first being Director of English Language Studies (2022-2025).
Cornish is from Canada. At 16, he went to Japan for one year, and coming back mostly fluent in Japanese, he went on to obtain a bachelor’s degree in Japanese Studies with honors from the University of Toronto in 1994. For several years, Cornish found success as a Japanese language interpreter/translator, and later worked as Marketing Manager for a Japanese tourism firm in Toronto. In 2003, he changed careers and began teaching English. 
Cornish has accumulated a variety of experience as an English teaching professional. For several years, he was an IELTS examiner. Cornish also developed and taught in training programs for English teachers from South Korea and China. He also wrote a language-training program for air marshals from Saudi Arabia. Cornish’s research capability and program development expertise allowed him to produce unique language training programs for several Canadian colleges oriented to hoteliers and chefs, pilots and air traffic controllers, and animation students matriculating from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing to Sheridan College in Canada.
Since 2007, Cornish has specialized in teaching English for Academic Purposes (EAP), teaching international students in Canada at both Sheridan College and the University of Toronto’s graduate school. In 2015, Cornish decided to teach EAP abroad, going first to Oman where he spent three years as Senior Language Instructor in the Foundation English Program at Sultan Qaboos University. Cornish then moved to China in 2018, taking up a post at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) in Suzhou, China. Cornish spent four years at XJTLU as a Senior Language Lecturer, and went on to become the Deputy Director and Academic Manager of the English Language Centre there.
In addition to Cornish’s first degree in Japanese studies, he has a Master's in Applied Linguistics from York University (Toronto) and a certificate in Language Program Management from Mount Royal University (Calgary).