Stay in the loop! Subscribe to our mailing list
John Delap, Senior Inclusion Policy & Project Officer, has been with ACA since October 2020. John is responsible for the facilitation of dialogue and development of international higher education stakeholders regarding institutional inclusion policies. His areas of interest and expertise lie in collaborating with faculty and student cohorts underrepresented in higher education to widen participation and develop institutional academic climates where all can thrive.
Current engagements:
John began his professional career in the field of higher education inclusion in 2005 serving at Vassar College (USA) as Community Fellow, a one year position coordinating the College's community engagement efforts. He completed a Master's of Philosophy degree in International Peace Studies at the Irish School of Ecumenics at Trinity College, Dublin (Ireland). From 2007 to 2016 John's tenure as Access & Civic Engagement Project Officer at the Technological University, Dublin afforded him the opportunity to found and embed a year-long mentoring module for and with low income, first generation college students. John also served as a consultant on the Irish Government's National Plan for Equity of Access to Higher Education.
John has also served as Director of the National Schools Programme at the Dublin-based NGO Future Voices Ireland, which was run in partnership with the Irish Office of the Ombudsman for Children, and co-delivered multi-day workshops in socio-economically disadvantaged secondary schools across Ireland alongside college students from those same schools. Following this, John worked with the European Students' Union in Brussels as Project Manager, where he worked with many European higher education institutions and policymakers on international Horizon 2020 and Erasmus+ projects, which were focused on inclusion and community engagement in higher education. Recently, John was recruited by the Office of the Vice Provost for Institutional Equity & Diversity of Princeton University, USA, as a Project Analyst, where he led a project to curate a more inclusive telling of the University's nuanced history. Additionally, this project enabled him to work on a several other inclusion training projects, including the University's efforts to train staff on best practices for the inclusion of transgender people. John has facilitated many residential, multi-day trainings for groups of European young people delivering trainings on LGBTQIA+ justice, migration and human trafficking, ecumenical dialogue, and restorative practices. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the World Student Christian Federation.
In 2020, John received honorable mention from Princeton University for his essay "Kindness, Communion & Tuna."