Dr. Jon A. Yasin, an expert on the hip-hop culture and its use as an education tool, will speak at Southern University at 7 p.m., Feb. 25, in the Royal Cotillion Ballroom of the Smith-Brown Memorial Union. 

Yasin’s appearance is the third in the Chancellor’s Lecture Series on the Baton Rouge campus. Other speakers have included famed writer, director, producer Spike Lee and author, talk show host and motivational speaker Iyanla Vanzant.

Yasin has written several scholarly articles about hip hop culture and how it can be used to empower students.

His interest in hip hop was sparked in 1988 when he noticed that his students were carrying composition notebooks full of original rap songs, yet they could not come up with a topic to write about in class. After learning the process for writing a rap song, Yasin realized that it was the same process for writing an academic essay.

Yasin described the concept to his students and they immediately understood that the only difference between the lyrics of their songs and an essay was the writing style.

Yasin, has served as a professor of English at Bergen Community College in New Jersey since 1988. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from California State University at Hayward, a Master of Education from Northeastern University’s School of Education, and a Doctorate from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and an Education Doctorate from Columbia University’s Teacher’s College.