About Jason
Jason Laker is Professor of Higher Education, Student Affairs, and Community Development; and Chair of the Department of Counselor Education (and former Vice President for Student Affairs) at San José State University in San José, California. SJSU is an urban public university with over 30,000 students. He is also an inducted member of the Diversity Scholars Network, hosted by the University of Michigan; and an affiliated consultant with the Beyond Diversity Resource Center in Laurel, New Jersey.
Jason's career in Higher Education spans over 30 years so far. He has served in a variety of teaching, research, and consulting roles, often while simultaneously working in university administration. His professional experience includes full-time and adjunct appointments at colleges and universities in both the United States and Canada, as well as speaking engagements and collaborative work with universities and other educational organizations around the world.
Jason was born and raised in Michigan. He holds a Ph.D. from the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona; an M.A. in Community Counseling from Adams State University in Alamosa, Colorado; and a B.S. in Organizational Communication from Central Michigan University in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. 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 and Dean of Student Affairs at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Queen’s is recognized as a selective international research university with 20,000 students. As Associate VP and Dean, Jason led a diverse administrative portfolio of eighteen units (including the nationally competitive intercollegiate athletics program), 250 FTE, and a combined $60M in base, ancillary, and externally funded budgets. His institutional responsibilities also included serving on the University Senate and supervising the licensing of Queen's brand mark.
During his time at Queen’s, in addition to his administrative work, Jason 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.
Directly before moving to Canada, Jason was the Dean of Campus Life at Saint John's University, a small Catholic university for men in Collegeville, Minnesota. Saint John’s operates in cooperation with the College of Saint Benedict, the only Benedictine college for women in the United States; they are both private liberal arts colleges. While working as a dean, Jason also served on the faculty within the Women's and Gender Studies program at Saint John’s, and taught undergraduate, graduate, and honors courses at St. Cloud State University, where he received the Honors Teacher of the Year Award by vote of students.
In 2017, Jason was selected to serve as the Division VI Faculty in Residence for the Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement Knowledge Community of the National Association for Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA). During the 2014-2015 academic year, Jason served 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 he was the recipient of the Newly Published Research Award from NASPA's Men and Masculinities Knowledge Community, which later named a scholarship in his honor in 2016. Jason was selected for the American College Personnel Association Foundation's Class of Diamond Honorees in 2010. ACPA describes this award as recognizing "outstanding and sustained contributions to higher education and to student affairs."
Internationally, Jason has been serving (since 2009) as the only North American on the editorial board of the Expertise Publications Program of the European Training Foundation. Based in Turin, Italy, ETF is a European Union agency involved in education reform, training, and labor market systems. Additionally, as a frequent visiting scholar and speaker, he has given presentations on gender issues in education at the University of Rijeka, Republic of Croatia; on contemplative and progressive pedagogies at Allama Iqbal Open University in Islamabad, Pakistan; and on Community Service-Learning Pedagogy at Spain’s Universidad de Navarra, among others. He and his SJSU department colleague Professor Dolores Mena co-lead an annual study abroad program to Costa Rica in partnership with the U.N.-mandated University for Peace based in San José, Costa Rica.
In 2009, Jason 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 those focusing on youth and families, education, poverty reduction, diversity and social cohesion, and immigrant resettlement support services. As a first-generation college student and the grandson of immigrants, he is particularly committed to topics of inclusion, access, and success in education at all levels.
In the course of his work as a professor, speaker, and consultant, Jason has developed and taught courses in several disciplines within the educational and social sciences. He has also presented many keynotes and invited sessions at professional conferences on student affairs and development issues, gender, community leadership, and related topics. His significant publication record in these areas includes two edited volumes: Masculinities in Higher Education, with Tracy L. Davis, Ph.D. (Routledge, 2011) and Canadian Perspectives on Men and Masculinities (Oxford University Press in 2012). Along with colleagues in Croatia and Spain, Jason has also edited two texts (see Publications page) about the roles of Higher Education in fostering engaged citizens, and is the international editor for Palgrave Studies in Global Citizenship Education and Democracy, a book series published by Palgrave Macmillan.
Jason's career in Higher Education spans over 30 years so far. He has served in a variety of teaching, research, and consulting roles, often while simultaneously working in university administration. His professional experience includes full-time and adjunct appointments at colleges and universities in both the United States and Canada, as well as speaking engagements and collaborative work with universities and other educational organizations around the world.
Jason was born and raised in Michigan. He holds a Ph.D. from the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona; an M.A. in Community Counseling from Adams State University in Alamosa, Colorado; and a B.S. in Organizational Communication from Central Michigan University in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. 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 and Dean of Student Affairs at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Queen’s is recognized as a selective international research university with 20,000 students. As Associate VP and Dean, Jason led a diverse administrative portfolio of eighteen units (including the nationally competitive intercollegiate athletics program), 250 FTE, and a combined $60M in base, ancillary, and externally funded budgets. His institutional responsibilities also included serving on the University Senate and supervising the licensing of Queen's brand mark.
During his time at Queen’s, in addition to his administrative work, Jason 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.
Directly before moving to Canada, Jason was the Dean of Campus Life at Saint John's University, a small Catholic university for men in Collegeville, Minnesota. Saint John’s operates in cooperation with the College of Saint Benedict, the only Benedictine college for women in the United States; they are both private liberal arts colleges. While working as a dean, Jason also served on the faculty within the Women's and Gender Studies program at Saint John’s, and taught undergraduate, graduate, and honors courses at St. Cloud State University, where he received the Honors Teacher of the Year Award by vote of students.
In 2017, Jason was selected to serve as the Division VI Faculty in Residence for the Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement Knowledge Community of the National Association for Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA). During the 2014-2015 academic year, Jason served 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 he was the recipient of the Newly Published Research Award from NASPA's Men and Masculinities Knowledge Community, which later named a scholarship in his honor in 2016. Jason was selected for the American College Personnel Association Foundation's Class of Diamond Honorees in 2010. ACPA describes this award as recognizing "outstanding and sustained contributions to higher education and to student affairs."
Internationally, Jason has been serving (since 2009) as the only North American on the editorial board of the Expertise Publications Program of the European Training Foundation. Based in Turin, Italy, ETF is a European Union agency involved in education reform, training, and labor market systems. Additionally, as a frequent visiting scholar and speaker, he has given presentations on gender issues in education at the University of Rijeka, Republic of Croatia; on contemplative and progressive pedagogies at Allama Iqbal Open University in Islamabad, Pakistan; and on Community Service-Learning Pedagogy at Spain’s Universidad de Navarra, among others. He and his SJSU department colleague Professor Dolores Mena co-lead an annual study abroad program to Costa Rica in partnership with the U.N.-mandated University for Peace based in San José, Costa Rica.
In 2009, Jason 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 those focusing on youth and families, education, poverty reduction, diversity and social cohesion, and immigrant resettlement support services. As a first-generation college student and the grandson of immigrants, he is particularly committed to topics of inclusion, access, and success in education at all levels.
In the course of his work as a professor, speaker, and consultant, Jason has developed and taught courses in several disciplines within the educational and social sciences. He has also presented many keynotes and invited sessions at professional conferences on student affairs and development issues, gender, community leadership, and related topics. His significant publication record in these areas includes two edited volumes: Masculinities in Higher Education, with Tracy L. Davis, Ph.D. (Routledge, 2011) and Canadian Perspectives on Men and Masculinities (Oxford University Press in 2012). Along with colleagues in Croatia and Spain, Jason has also edited two texts (see Publications page) about the roles of Higher Education in fostering engaged citizens, and is the international editor for Palgrave Studies in Global Citizenship Education and Democracy, a book series published by Palgrave Macmillan.