Marquette SOE Welcomes Fr. Jeffrey LaBelle to Faculty

Released: 10/10/07

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The School of Education is pleased to welcome new faculty member, Father Jeffrey T. LaBelle, S.J., as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Policy and Leadership.  Fr. LaBelle joins us after having served in the International and Multicultural Education Department at the University of San Francisco.

Fr. LaBelle holds a BA in InterAmerican Studies with emphasis in Spanish and ESL from the University of the Pacific. As part of his training for the priesthood, he earned Master of Divinity and Master of Theology degrees from the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley. He completed his doctorate in International and Multicultural Education from the University of San Francisco in 2005. Fr. LaBelle’s academic and scholarly interests focus on sociolinguistics, multicultural education, and immigrant English language acquisition. In addition to his teaching and research, he is expected to contribute substantially to the SOE’s efforts to support P-12 Catholic Education. 

Prior to teaching at the university level, Fr. LaBelle served for twelve years in two different Catholic parishes in San Jose, California, St. Joseph Cathedral and Most Holy Trinity, where he was involved in extensive pastoral work among immigrants from Latin America, Vietnam, and the Philippines. Fluent in Spanish for over 30 years, Fr. LaBelle has also taught ESL and Spanish at secondary schools in California and Peru. In collaboration with Frs. Gerald O’Collins, S.J., and Daniel Kendall, S.J., he has recently co-edited Pope John Paul II: A Reader published by Paulist Press.