About Jason
Jason Laker is a tenured, Full Professor in the Department of Counselor Education within the Lurie College of Education and a Salzburg Fellow at San José State University in California, USA. At SJSU, he previously served as the Vice President for Student Affairs, leading a Division with 28 departments, 350 staff, and $68M in combined budgets. He also holds an appointment as Affiliated Research Faculty with the Center for Research and Education on Gender and Sexuality at San Francisco State University.
Jason's career in Higher Education spans over 25 years, and includes teaching, consulting, and academic work along with successful and progressively more complex administrative leadership experiences in student and academic affairs in several types of university environments (e.g., research, public, private, large, small, religious, liberal arts, Land Grant) in the U.S. and Canada (he is originally from Michigan, USA).
He holds a Ph.D. from the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Arizona, an M.A. in Community Counseling from Adams State College (CO), and a B.S. in Organizational Communication from Central Michigan University. His doctoral dissertation, Beyond Bad Dogs: Toward a Pedagogy of Engagement of Male Students won the Dissertation of the Year Award from the Association for Student Judicial Affairs.
Prior to joining SJSU, Jason served as Associate Vice-Principal (now titled as Vice-Provost) and Dean of Student Affairs at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, a selective international research university with 20,000 students. In this capacity, he led a diverse administrative portfolio of 18 units (including the nationally competitive intercollegiate athletics program), 250 FTE, and a combined $60M in base, ancillary and externally funded budgets.
At Queen's, his institutional responsibilities included serving on the University Senate and supervising the licensing of Queen's brand mark. He also taught in the Department of Gender Studies, was affiliated with the graduate program in Cultural Studies, and served as a Fellow with the Centre for the Study of Democracy in the School of Policy Studies. Prior to his work in Canada, Jason was the Dean of Campus Life at Saint John's University, a small, Catholic (Benedictine) Liberal Arts university for men in Collegeville, Minnesota, USA where he also served on the faculty within the Women's and Gender Studies program. While in Minnesota, Jason also taught undergraduate, graduate and honors courses at Saint Cloud State University, where he received the Honors Teacher of the Year Award by vote of students.
Jason has developed and/or taught courses in several disciplines, particularly on subjects of community, identity and diversity, and has received several awards for his teaching, research, and service. Most recently, in 2017 Jason has been selected to serve as Faculty in Residence for the Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement Knowledge Community of the National Association for Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA). Jason has previously served (in 2014-15) as the Faculty in Residence for the Standing Committee for Graduate Students and New Professionals of the American College Personnel Association (ACPA). In 2013, he served as the Visiting Scholar for the School and College Organization for Prevention Educators (SCOPE) and in 2012 received the Newly Published Research Award from NASPA's Men and Masculinities Knowledge Community, which named a scholarship in his honor in 2016. In 2010, Jason was selected for the American College Personnel Association Foundation's Class of Diamond Honorees. ACPA describes this award as recognizing "outstanding and sustained contributions to higher education and to student affairs."
His international activities include serving as the only North American on the editorial board of the Expertise Publications Program of the European Training Foundation (an agency of the European Union), and as a visiting scholar (in 2009, 2013, and 2014) at the University of Rijeka, Republic of Croatia (on gender issues in education) and Universidad de Navarra in Spain (on Community Service-Learning Pedagogy). In 2009, he was an invited panelist at a conference in St. Petersburg, Russia on the subject of citizenship education. His own civic leadership has included several community advisory and non-profit board roles particularly focusing on youth and families, education, poverty reduction, diversity and social cohesion, and immigrant resettlement support services.
Jason has presented many keynotes and invited sessions at professional conferences on student affairs and development issues, gender, community leadership and related topics, and has a significant publication record in these areas including two edited volumes -- Masculinities in Higher Education (with Tracy Davis, Routledge, 2011) and Canadian Perspectives on Men and Masculinities (Oxford University Press, 2011). Along with colleagues in Croatia and Spain, Jason has edited two texts (see Publications page) about the roles of Higher Education in fostering engaged citizens, comparing the contexts of Eastern and Western Europe, and North America, and is the Series Editor for Palgrave (UK) Studies in Global Citizenship Education and Democracy.
Jason's career in Higher Education spans over 25 years, and includes teaching, consulting, and academic work along with successful and progressively more complex administrative leadership experiences in student and academic affairs in several types of university environments (e.g., research, public, private, large, small, religious, liberal arts, Land Grant) in the U.S. and Canada (he is originally from Michigan, USA).
He holds a Ph.D. from the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Arizona, an M.A. in Community Counseling from Adams State College (CO), and a B.S. in Organizational Communication from Central Michigan University. His doctoral dissertation, Beyond Bad Dogs: Toward a Pedagogy of Engagement of Male Students won the Dissertation of the Year Award from the Association for Student Judicial Affairs.
Prior to joining SJSU, Jason served as Associate Vice-Principal (now titled as Vice-Provost) and Dean of Student Affairs at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, a selective international research university with 20,000 students. In this capacity, he led a diverse administrative portfolio of 18 units (including the nationally competitive intercollegiate athletics program), 250 FTE, and a combined $60M in base, ancillary and externally funded budgets.
At Queen's, his institutional responsibilities included serving on the University Senate and supervising the licensing of Queen's brand mark. He also taught in the Department of Gender Studies, was affiliated with the graduate program in Cultural Studies, and served as a Fellow with the Centre for the Study of Democracy in the School of Policy Studies. Prior to his work in Canada, Jason was the Dean of Campus Life at Saint John's University, a small, Catholic (Benedictine) Liberal Arts university for men in Collegeville, Minnesota, USA where he also served on the faculty within the Women's and Gender Studies program. While in Minnesota, Jason also taught undergraduate, graduate and honors courses at Saint Cloud State University, where he received the Honors Teacher of the Year Award by vote of students.
Jason has developed and/or taught courses in several disciplines, particularly on subjects of community, identity and diversity, and has received several awards for his teaching, research, and service. Most recently, in 2017 Jason has been selected to serve as Faculty in Residence for the Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement Knowledge Community of the National Association for Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA). Jason has previously served (in 2014-15) as the Faculty in Residence for the Standing Committee for Graduate Students and New Professionals of the American College Personnel Association (ACPA). In 2013, he served as the Visiting Scholar for the School and College Organization for Prevention Educators (SCOPE) and in 2012 received the Newly Published Research Award from NASPA's Men and Masculinities Knowledge Community, which named a scholarship in his honor in 2016. In 2010, Jason was selected for the American College Personnel Association Foundation's Class of Diamond Honorees. ACPA describes this award as recognizing "outstanding and sustained contributions to higher education and to student affairs."
His international activities include serving as the only North American on the editorial board of the Expertise Publications Program of the European Training Foundation (an agency of the European Union), and as a visiting scholar (in 2009, 2013, and 2014) at the University of Rijeka, Republic of Croatia (on gender issues in education) and Universidad de Navarra in Spain (on Community Service-Learning Pedagogy). In 2009, he was an invited panelist at a conference in St. Petersburg, Russia on the subject of citizenship education. His own civic leadership has included several community advisory and non-profit board roles particularly focusing on youth and families, education, poverty reduction, diversity and social cohesion, and immigrant resettlement support services.
Jason has presented many keynotes and invited sessions at professional conferences on student affairs and development issues, gender, community leadership and related topics, and has a significant publication record in these areas including two edited volumes -- Masculinities in Higher Education (with Tracy Davis, Routledge, 2011) and Canadian Perspectives on Men and Masculinities (Oxford University Press, 2011). Along with colleagues in Croatia and Spain, Jason has edited two texts (see Publications page) about the roles of Higher Education in fostering engaged citizens, comparing the contexts of Eastern and Western Europe, and North America, and is the Series Editor for Palgrave (UK) Studies in Global Citizenship Education and Democracy.