Jackson earned all three of her degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has held faculty positions at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (1979–1982), Michigan State University (1982–1985), University of Oklahoma (1985–1990), and the University of Arizona (1991–2007). At Arizona she also served in a series of administrative positions, including Vice Provost/Vice President for Learning and Information Technologies and Chief Information Officer. In 2007 she returned to the University of Illinois as a faculty member and Chief Information Officer of the campus.^[1] She resigned from the position of CIO in 2011 to protest administrative changes that she feared would harm the Urbana campus' status as a world leader in information technology ^[2] but remains a faculty member.^[3]

The central theme in Professor Jackson's work has been communication design, with specific interests ranging from the natural design of argumentation to highly engineered systems for managing complex human activities.^[4] Her work has appeared in Communication Monographs, Communication Theory, Journal of the American Forensic Association, Quarterly Journal of Speech, and Argumentation, among other journals. She has written or co-authored three books.

• from the National Communication Association:^[5]
  • Charles Woolbert Research Award, 1995
  • Golden Anniversary Monograph Award, 1981
  • Outstanding Scholarship Award, Language and Social Interaction Division, 2005
• from the American Forensic Association:^[6]
  • Daniel Rohrer Memorial Research Award, 1993
• from the International Society for the Study of Argumentation:^[7]
  • Distinguished Scholar Award, 1997

Selected works:^[8]

• Aakhus, M., & Jackson, S. (2005). Technology, design, and interaction. In K. Fitch & R. E. Sanders (eds)., Handbook of Language and Social Interaction", (pp. 411-436). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
• Jackson, S., & Brashers, D. E. (1994). Random Factors in ANOVA, Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences . Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
• Jackson, S., & Wolski, S. (2001). Identification of and adaptation to students' preinstructional beliefs in introductory communication research methods: Contributions of interactive web technology. Communication Education, 50, 189–205.
• Eemeren, F. H. van, Grootendorst, R., Jackson, S., & Jacobs, S. (1993). Reconstructing Argumentative Discourse. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama.
• Jackson, S. (1992).Message Effects Research: Principles of design and analysis. New York: Guilford.