Jaime Lester
Jaime Lester, an associate professor of higher education at George Mason University, has been named a Presidential Fellow for the 2017-18 academic year.
Lester, an expert on higher education leadership, will assist George Mason President Ángel Cabrera on projects related to faculty engagement. She will also work with the President’s Office to promote women and underrepresented faculty in STEM fields, and help clarify and communicate the university’s strategic plan.
“I’d like to see a larger plan around faculty engagement that is faculty informed,” Lester said. “I think there are a lot of faculty interested in becoming leaders, but don’t necessarily know what pathways they have. Hopefully, I can affect some change.”
Lester is the sixth Presidential Fellow, succeeding associate professor of psychology Eden King, whose work on faculty engagement Lester said she hopes to supplement.
At Mason since 2008, Lester was Mason’s state council rising star nominee in 2011 and received the Mason Excellence in Teaching Award in 2013. She has produced more than 50 peer-reviewed journal articles and five books on gender perspectives in community colleges, family friendly policies in higher education, ways to restructure higher education to promote collaboration, non-positional leadership, and workplace bullying.
Lester said she will collaborate with offices across campus as a Presidential Fellow.
“Hopefully, people will reach out to me,” she said. “I’d love people to reach out to me and say, ‘I’m really invested in that idea. Tell me what you are doing.’ ”