Dr. Jerlando F.L. Jackson remembers attending a session on career trajectories for faculty at the annual conference of the Association for the Study of Higher Education early in his academic career.
“In that session, one of the papers focused on special professorships,” recalls Jackson, who paid close attention to the presenters because up until that moment, he had not heard of any such special distinctions above being a full professor. “However, on that day, I learned about the role and distinction of distinguished, endowed and university professorships. It was presented as the highest honor that a university could bestow on a faculty member. It became clear to me then that I needed to set my career goals on obtaining one of more of these distinctions.”
Seven years after Jackson began teaching at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as an assistant professor, he earned tenure in 2007, was promoted to full professor in 2011, and then was named a Vilas Distinguished Professor of Higher Education in 2012. Created by the Vilas Estate Trustees, the professorships are university-wide distinctions with approximately 30 recipients. Jackson was the first African-American to be selected for this high honor.
“I was very pleased that my department, School of Education, and university felt that my body of work, including my contributions on campus warranted the distinction,” says Jackson. “I quickly also learned that these distinctions come with responsibilities to take on important university service obligations.”
An expert on hiring practices, career mobility, workforce diversity and workplace discrimination in hiring education, Jackson has emerged as a national thought leader, authoring over 125 publications and a handful of books including Measuring Glass Ceiling Effects: Opportunities and Challenges and Strengthening the African-American Educational Pipeline: Informing Research, Policy and Practice.
A native of Ashburn, Ga., Jackson was the first in his family to attend college. As a music major who played in the drum and bugle corps, he earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern Mississippi, a master’s from Auburn University and doctorate from Iowa State University. Over the course of his 18- year career in the professoriate, Jackson has spearheaded several national and international initiatives, including serving as the founding executive director of the Center for African-American Research and Policy (CAARP), a nonpartisan, independent, nonprofit research organization.
As an advocate and mentor to the next generation of emerging scholars, Jackson created the Asa G. Hilliard III and Barbara A. Sizemore Research Course on African-Americans and Education. The interdisciplinary course — which has been offered at the American Education Research Association’s annual meeting since 2007 — is a day-long seminar that spans higher education issues, K-12 education and multicultural education. More than 400 emerging scholars have participated in the course since its inception.
