Meet Our Staff

Jerome A. Jackson is a Whitaker Eminent Scholar in Science, and Program Director of the Whitaker Center for Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education at Florida Gulf Coast University. Jerry’s professional expertise focuses on endangered species, forest and coastal ecosystems, and the history of natural sciences. His major research efforts have focused on woodpeckers, especially the endangered Red-cockaded and Ivory-billed Woodpeckers. He served for 8 years as Team Leader for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Endangered Species Recovery Team for the Red-cockaded Woodpecker and continues to serve on that team and on the South Florida Ecosystems Recovery Team.

Dr. Jackson has also been active in environmental education, having taught biodiversity concepts at the third and fifth grade levels and contributed to Public Television programs. His research and teaching have taken him to Cuba to study Ivory-billed Woodpeckers, to Indonesia to teach biodiversity concepts at 11 universities, and to the Peruvian Amazon with middle school classes. He was co-host of a weekly nature-oriented feature called “Southern Outdoors” on WCBI-TV in Columbus, Mississippi for 13 years, and now does a daily Public Radio feature in southwest Florida called “With the Wild Things.”

Dr. Jackson is past-President of the Wilson Ornithological Society, the Association of Field Ornithologists, and the Inland Bird Banding Association, and is past-Chair of the North American Banding Council. He has also served as editor of the Wilson Bulletin, Journal of Field Ornithology, Inland Bird Banding, North American Bird Bander, the Mississippi Kite, and regional editor of American Birds. He is currently editor of Florida Field Naturalist and the Journal of Caribbean Ornithology.