Dr. Jacob Cooper joined App State Athletics as a Clinical Sport Psychologist in 2019 and was recently promoted to Associate Athletic Director for Sports Psychology and Mental Wellness in August 2024.
Dr. Cooper is both licensed as a psychologist (HSPP) and certified as a mental performance consultant (CMPC). This means he possesses the highest standard of training available in order to provide the most comprehensive mental wellness care for student athletes. Additionally, he serves as a member of the NFLPA & United States Olympic & Paralympic Sport Psychology preferred clinician directory.
Prior to helping build the sport psychology services at App State, Cooper spent several years providing therapy, psychological assessment, and consultation within the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the Federal Bureau of Prisons system (BOP), and multiple university counseling centers. Additionally, while completing his PhD he worked with the Boston University (BU) Sport Medicine Department as a sport and performance consultant for their student-athletes and teams along with professional athletes in the Boston area. In 2019 he completed his matched clinical residency with the Charles George VA Medical Center in Asheville.
Dr. Cooper regularly provides consultation to App State coaches & staff to help them establish training approaches that enhance resilience and wellbeing from a value based systemic perspective. Jacob's approach to student athlete care can best be described as person-centered, collaborative and evidence based. To this end, he strives to consider each athletes’ unique sociocultural background, while staying rooted in interpersonal neuroscience and cutting edge empirically-based therapy modalities to help them reach their wellness and performance goals.
He obtained his Ph.D. in counseling psychology with a specialization in sport and performance psychology from BU along with a dual masters in clinical psychology (M.A.) and sport psychology (M.S.) from Ball State University in 2014. He earned his B.A. in psychology from Taylor University in Upland, Indiana in 2011, where he was a scholarship athlete and four-year starter on the football team. He and his wife, Abbey, have lived in Boone for seven years and are the proud parents of two children, Mercy Louise & Jax William
It was during his training and athletic career that Cooper developed a deep passion for facilitating and researching the use of sport as a vehicle to foster positive development in youth around the world. He helped conduct and research grant-funded sport for development programs in the countries of Ecuador (2010) and Jordan (2013). Additionally, from 2014-2019, he worked as a Glenn Fellow Scholar and assisted Dr. John McCarthy with the day-to-day operation of a physical activity-based program that partnered with local inner-city Boston schools. The program served socially vulnerable and traditionally marginalized youth by providing a caring sport climate to cultivate skills pertaining to health & wellbeing.
