Our director, Jason Van Heukelum, comes to Highlands International School with nine years of public school educational experience in the United States, including three years of teaching and six years of administration.  Jason spent the last two years as the principal of Troutman Middle School in North Carolina where he led the school to be a top 25 “most improved” school in the state of North Carolina and was named the Middle School Principal of the Year in his first year as principal for the Iredell-Statesville Schools.

Jason has a clear vision of what he expects for the future of HIS and is committed to seeing it through to completion.  If you spend any time with him you’ll be sure to hear the phrase “rigorously challenge every student.”  This phrase is the core belief that he brings to the job and he looks forward to seeing that fulfilled in the years ahead.

In addition to academic excellence, Jason believes that HIS should be actively involved in instilling the following core values in our students:

Leadership

Compassion

Responsibility

These three values will be integrated throughout the curriculum and chapel services.  Jason firmly believes that HIS is partnering with its parents to raise the next generation of leaders in Bolivia and the world.  What an awesome responsibility we have to ensure that our students enter their adult life with these values so ingrained in their lives that it literally becomes the character from which they live and make decisions.  This is very exciting!

Jason’s educational background include recent acceptance into the doctoral programs of Vanderbilt University and Seton Hall University, a Masters Degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in School Administration, and a Bachelors degree from Cedarville University in Mathematics and Secondary Education.