Darrel Staat was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1941. He grew up in Holland Michigan and completed his doctorate at the University of Michigan in 1973. He served as president of two technical colleges in Maine, the founding president of one, a community college in Virginia, and the South Carolina Technical College System. He is in his sixth year on the graduate faculty of Wingate University. He has published three books in 2018 - 2019 with a fourth to be published in July 2020. His publications focus on the impact of twenty-first-century technologies on community colleges and universities.