MA Program Faculty & Staff

Tomoko Takahashi joined Soka University of America, Calabasas in 1992. In February 1994, she was appointed as the university’s first dean of the graduate school to direct the master of arts degree program in second and foreign language education. In 2001 she was appointed as SUA’s first provost to serve as the chief academic officer of the university, overseeing both the graduate and undergraduate academic programs through 2014. She currently serves as vice president for institutional research and assessment, as well as dean of the graduate school. In 2015 Dr. Takahashi was elected to the WASC Senior College and University Commission. As SUA’s accreditation liaison officer since 2001, a frequent visiting committee member since 2008, and as a commissioner, she has gained valuable experience with and made a significant contribution to the accrediting commission. Dr. Takahashi received her doctorate in applied linguistics from Columbia University and her second doctorate in translation studies from Monash University in Australia. She has published more than 20 books including scholarly books in English and Japanese on language learning, cross-cultural communication, and lexico-semantics; 15 textbooks for Japanese learners of English, eight of which have been translated into Chinese and Korean; and Japanese translations of Rosa Parks: My Story, Quiet Strength, and Dear Mrs. Parks. Takahashi’s memoir entitled Samurai and Cotton, published in November 2011, was named the winner in the autobiography category of the 2012 Next Generation Indie Book Awards.

John (aka Jay) completed his doctorate in American history at the University of Rochester, working under the late cultural and intellectual historian Christopher Lasch. Prior to joining Soka University of America in 1996, Jay was a professor in the department of educational foundations in the College of Education, University of Hawaii at Manoa. From the university’s opening in 2001 he served as a member of the humanities concentration and from 2005 through 2016 as dean of students. He also served as associate director of the Pacific Basin Research Center from 1997 until 2014, in which capacity he edited and co-authored four books. In 2019 he was awarded with the BELMAS Management in Education 2018 Best Paper of the Year. Also in 2019, Jay published his most recent book, single-authored, The Rise of the South in American Thought and Education: The Rockefeller Years (1902-1917) and Beyond. His research is situated at the intersection of cultural and intellectual history, social and economic development, and the transnational sources of schooling.

Karen Moran Jackson’s work centers on the intersection between adolescence development, multicultural research methodologies, and policy analysis. She conducts research in two main areas: the role of research methodology in social and policy change and the development of adolescent attitudes and interests in spaces that have traditionally marginalized adolescents of color. She came to Soka University after working as a research associate at the Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in quantitative analysis and research methods. Dr. Jackson graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a PhD from the department of educational psychology and a portfolio in applied statistical modeling from the department of statistics and data science. Prior to graduate school, she worked as a middle school science teacher in California and Texas.

Dr. Ryan M. Allen is the Assistant Professor of Comparative and International Education and Leadership in the Educational Leadership and Societal Change Program at Soka University of America. His research centers on internationalization of higher education, EdTech, intersections between education and urbanism, and the East Asian region. He has published in numerous academic publications and popular outlets such as his most recent co-edited volume entitled Online Teaching and Learning in Higher Education during COVID-19: International Perspectives and Experiences (Routledge, 2021). He is the current host of the KIX EAP Podcast, where he interviews scholars, policymakers, and educators on national development on the Europe, Asia, Pacific regions. He is also an active member in the Comparative and International Education Society, including the Study Abroad and International Student SIG, where he shares his passion for supporting international mobility and promoting study abroad. Before joining SUA, he was an Assistant Professor at Chapman University’s Donna Ford Attallah College of Educational Studies and Coordinator for the Chapman-Shanghai Normal University Doctoral Program. Dr. Allen holds a PhD in Comparative and International Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, an MA in International Relations from Yonsei University (Seoul, South Korea), and a BA in Public Relations from the University of Central Oklahoma.

You can find his full research profile on Google Scholar.