Francis Awarded 2018 Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship

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Dania Francis, assistant professor of economics and Afro-American studies, has been selected to receive a National Academy of Education / Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship, an award created to encourage outstanding scholars at the postdoctoral level to pursue critical education research projects.

The $70,000 awards support non-residential postdoctoral proposals that make significant scholarly contributions to the field of education. The program also develops the careers of its recipients through professional development activities involving National Academy of Education members.

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

Francis was named a 2014-15 Institute for Social Science Research (ISSR) Scholar and a 2018-19 Lilly Fellow for Teaching Excellence.

She credits the ISSR Scholars Program with providing the interdisciplinary peer review, expert mentoring and course release she needed to develop her proposal for the Spencer fellowship, one of only 30 awarded from a competitive field of more than 200 submissions.