Jarrod is a Berea alum (2004) where he studied philosophy at Berea College, and during that time spent one academic year at the Universiti Sains Malaysia, where he earned an undergraduate certificate in Southeast Asian studies and then worked as a translator and program assistant for the World Affairs Council in Malaysia the following year. After graduation from Berea, he served as the Program Assistant to the Center for Learning, Teaching, Communication and Research (now the Center for Transformative Learning) from February 2004 to July 2005. Jarrod also spent two months as a special guest of Asia InnerStage, studying and conducting research in Japan.

In 2005, Jarrod moved to Bangalore, India, where he primarily resided until beginning graduate studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in 2008. Jarrod has more than a decade of leadership experience in education technologies and instruction, including serving as founding academic director of TutorVista.Com, which grew into the largest online tutoring company in the world during Jarrod’s tenure, and co-designing Pearson Writing Services (now Pearson Smarthinking). Jarrod served as Executive Direct of Woodford & Wheeler International Cultural Consulting, Inc. where he worked in ed-tech start-ups in the United States, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, India, South Korea, and Singapore. He was a co-founder of the first online tutoring company in the Middle East and North Africa regions. eMuallim. He is a founding and lifetime member of the Global Society for Online Literacy Educators, an affiliate of the Association for Writing Across the Curriculum, Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication, Council of Writing Program Administrators, National Council of Teachers of English, and other umbrella organizations.

Jarrod’s academic background is in Western, South Asian, and Islamic philosophy and Southeast Asian studies. Jarrod has lived, worked, and studied in India, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Cambodia and has conducted extensive fieldwork in Japan, Myanmar, and Vietnam. At the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, Jarrod’s coursework focused on canonical texts in the Western tradition, contemporary metaphysics, South Asian philosophy (Indian and Buddhist), and Islamic legal philosophy.

Jarrod’s dissertation, The Metaphysics of Similarity and Analogical Reasoning, pulled on sources from contemporary analytic metaphysics; classical philosophy; the debates between Buddhists, Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika, and Prabhākara Mīmāṃsāka in the Sanskritic traditions; Islamic jurisprudence and virtue epistemology to address contemporary issues in analytical metaphysics and epistemology related to the metaphysics and recognition of similarity and its use in reasoning. His dissertation committee members were Dr. Tamara Albertini, Dr. Arindam Chakrabarti (chair), Dr. Vrinda Dalmiya, Dr. Jesse Knutson (outside member), and Dr. George Tsai. Jarrod’s work as a graduate student was supported by a Jack Kent Cooke Graduate Scholarship, one of the largest and most competitive scholarships in the United States, as well as a graduate assistantship and foreign language fellowships.

Jarrod also completed over 80 credit hours in Southeast Asian studies courses and languages, including language coursework in Sanskrit, Khmer (Cambodian), and Indonesian; he received the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship in both Indonesian and Khmer languages, and received the Critical Language Scholarship to study Indonesian in East Java at the Universitas Negeri Malang. Jarrod completed his language graduate exams in Sanskrit (distinguished). His Indonesia was assessed as high-advanced by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. His Khmer was assessed as intermediate by the Institute of Foreign Languages, Phnom Penh, Cambodia. He has continued to his language studies formally, in terms of coursework, and informally through tutors and self-study since those assessments. Jarrod also has language skills in Pali, the canonical language of Theravada Buddhism, and limited communication and literacy skills in Vietnamese.

Jarrod came to Berea College as a sabbatical replacement in 2016 and moved into a tenure-track position in 2019. Since coming to Berea, Jarrod has received several sources of funding for his research, including funding the provided opportunities for undergraduate students. In 2017, he received the prestigious Florence Tan Moeson Fellowship which provided funding for travel and stay for two weeks of archival research at the Library of Congress Asian Reading Room. Jarrod presented his research from that fellowship’s study at the Association of Asian Studies Annual Conference in March 2018.

Jarrod also received a four-year grant from NASA’s South and Southeast Asia Research Initiative, “Land-Cover/Land-Use Change in Southern Vietnam Through the Lenses of Conflict, Religion, and Politics, 1980s to Present” to investigate the influence of Hòa Hảo Buddhism on environmental ethics and attitudes and their impacts on land-use change. Funding began in February 2018 and included funding for an undergraduate research assistant. Jarrod has conducted two summers of fieldwork in Vietnam, including leading a team of faculty from the University of Maryland and Miami University, in 2019, and anticipates a third and final year of fieldwork in 2021.

Most recently, he received an AsiaNetwork Freeman Faculty-Student Fellowship for the grant titled, “Sacred Geography & Environmental Change in Southern Vietnam.” This fellowship provides full funding for Jarrod and four undergraduate students to conduct research related to philosophical and religious responses to environmental change though the lens of sacred geography in southern Vietnam and will take place in 2023.