Dr. Francis will conduct reseach to help us understand minority and women's underrepresentation in advanced math courses in high school by investigating whether school counselors exhibit racial or gender bias during the course assignment process. This research is in collaboration with UMass faculty members Dr. Angela de Oliveira in Resource Economics and Dr. Carey Dimmitt in the College of Education. 

Dr. Francis credits the ISSR Scholars Program with providing the interdisciplinary peer review, expert mentoring, and course release she needed to develop her proposal - one of only 30 awarded from a competitive field of over 200 submissions. ISSR Scholars come from all of the UMass Colleges, and have obtained an unprecedented funding success rate of over 80% since the program began in 2012. 

Please join us in congratulating Dr. Francis, and supporting her future successes.