Jerlando F. L. Jackson, Ph.D.

Dr. Jerlando F. L. Jackson founded the Wei LAB in 2010, and served as the Director and Chief Research Scientist until 2022. Effective in 2022, Dr. Jackson took the position as the Dean of Michigan State University’s College of Education and a MSU Foundation Professor of Education.

Prior to joining Michigan State University in 2022, while he served at the Wei LAB, he held both the Rupple-Bascom Professor of Education and Vilas Distinguished Professor of Higher Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also served as department chair of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis (ELPA) in the School of Education at UW-Madison.

Dr. Jackson established multiple groundbreaking initiatives that include serving as founding executive director of the Center for African American Research and Policy (CAARP) in 2005, founding co-director of the Asa G. Hilliard III and Barbara A. Sizemore Research Course on African Americans and Education, and co-founder of the International Colloquium on Black Males in Education in 2011 (ICBME). He has also received external funding to develop the Beyond the Game program and the National Study of Intercollegiate Athletics, transformational projects related to the experiences of student-athlete and staff in intercollegiate athletics.