Jay Rasmussen

Job Title

Professor of Education Emeritus
Education, College of Arts and Sciences

Highlight

Jay has served for 27 years as a teacher educator and is currently a Professor Emeritus of Education at Bethel University. Teaching responsibilities included undergraduate and graduate level courses in literacy education and assessment. His previous administrative responsibilities included serving as a Faculty Development Coordinator at Bethel and as the Program Director for the M.A. Program in Education: K-12. From 1997-2006 which he helped develop and oversee four master's programs and one doctoral program as the Director of Graduate Programs in Education at Bethel. Previous to university teaching/administrative experience, he was employed as an elementary classroom teacher and building principal for eight years. Jay holds a B.A. degree in elementary education from Florida State University, a M.A. degree in educational administration from the University of Minnesota, and a Ph.D. degree in curriculum and instruction (with an emphasis on reading, language arts, and children's literature) from the University of Minnesota.

Started at Bethel

1997

Education

Florida State University - B.S. in Elementary Education, 1975
University of Minnesota - M.A. in Educational Administration, 1986
University of Minnesota - Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction, 1996

Awards

In 2002 Jay was the recipient of a Fulbright Research Scholar Award to the Institute of Educational Research at the University of Oslo. As a part of this work he moved to Norway for six months with his family. In 2009 Jay was fortunate enough to be awarded the Faculty Excellence Award in Teaching at Bethel.

Publications

Jay has been an instructor in the Clinical Faculty Academy which is part of the Twin Cities Teacher Collaborative (TC2), a Bush Foundation initiative created to train up to 750 teachers per year. He still maintains a fairly active role as a national and international conference speaker and serve as a consultant to several schools in the U.S. and Mexico. Research interests include Latino educational issues, Mexican American children's literature, vocabulary instruction, boys as readers, flow theory, strategies to engage all learners, online learning, flipped instruction, and faculty development. Assorted articles have been published in the European Journal of Education, Reading Teacher, Journal of Reading Education, Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, MultiCultural Review, Minnesota English Journal, Arizona Reading Journal, Journal of the California literature Project, Principal, and Contemporary Issues in Reading.

Hobbies and Interests

Personal Background & Interests

Nina Jay's daughter, graduated from Bethel in 2011 with a major in social work. She is married to a high school math teacher and currently works as a school-based social worker with Latino youth. Jay's son, Conor, graduated from Bethel with a major in Social Studies Education 5-12. In terms of hobbies/interests, Jay enjoys traveling, backpacking, cross-country skiing, golf, muskie fishing, and learning Spanish. In his free time he enjoys spending time with family at a small beach-side casita recently built in Manzanillo, MX. They are also co-owners of a lake cabin in Northwest Wisconsin. In the summer of 2013, Jay completed a 71 day motorcycle trip with his son. This trip from Minnesota to Argentina covered over 12,000 miles. A photo blog of the trip can be accessed in galleries labeled "La Gran Aventura" at http://jayrasmussen.smugmug.com.

Areas of expertise

Jay has served for 27 years as a teacher educator at Bethel University. His teaching responsibilities included undergraduate and graduate level courses in literacy education and assessment. My administrative responsibilities included serving as a Faculty Development Coordinator at Bethel and as the Program Director for the M.A. Program in Education: K-12. From 1997-2006 he helped develop and oversee four masters programs and one doctoral program as the Director of Graduate Programs in Education at Bethel. Previous to Jay's university teaching/administrative experience, he was employed as an elementary classroom teacher and building principal for eight years. He holds a B.A. degree in elementary education from Florida State University, a M.A. degree in educational administration from the University of Minnesota, and a Ph.D. degree in curriculum and instruction (with an emphasis on reading, language arts, and children's literature) from the University of Minnesota.