President Finalist Jamal Cooks

Jamal Cooks, Ph.D.

Dr. Jamal Cooks is the Vice President of Academic Services at Chabot College in Hayward. He manages a $50 million instructional budget and promotes providing resources for curriculum materials, instructional professional development, and sessions on assessment with equity. In addition, Dr. Cooks served as Accreditation Liaison Officer as a major contributor to the ISER and coordinated written response and evidence to ten core inquiries, which lead to a successful accreditation of the college. Moreover, Dr. Cooks successfully implemented an AB 705 procedure, increasing the number of faculty of color across campus to better reflect the student population at Chabot. He also co-authored a book with P2P Fellow Dr. Jeanne Wilson, which focuses on eliminating student equity gaps in community college.

Dr. Cooks is an active participant in a number of organizations. Some of these organizations and positions include: graduate of the Great Deans and the Mentor programs Association of California Community College Administration (ACCCA), President of the Black Education Association (BEA) for Northern California, and the Marian Schivers Scholarship Award winner in the Carolyn Grubbs Williams Leadership Development Institute (LDI) sponsored by the National Council on Black American Affairs (NCBAA). In addition, he has served for over 20 years as an active member on a number of committees and leadership positions in the National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE), including the former Chair of the Assembly on

Research (NCTE-AR), the Middle Level Steering Committee, and the Committee on English Education.

Prior to community college administration, Dr. Cooks served as a full professor at San Francisco State University. He served as the Associate Director for the Educational Leadership doctoral program where he worked with a leadership team to direct the program, increased the number of the faculty of color as instructors, provided training to faculty about giving culturally relevant pedagogy, and chaired over 20 dissertations.

Originally from Oakland, Dr. Cooks has a doctorate in Language, Literacy, and Culture and an M.A. in Curriculum Development from the University of Michigan and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Economy of Industrial Societies from the University of California at Berkeley. He lives in Oakland with his wife and his children.