Northeastern University Professor Helps Graduate Students Unleash Education’s Potential By Tonya Jameson Photos by T. Ortega Gaines
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orliss Brown Thompson loved school as a child. She volunteered for school projects and got good grades, but she noticed her cousins and other classmates didn’t care about school. Nor did they get the chance to volunteer on special projects. “I started to see this pattern of Black students not having educational experiences that were interesting, and that would help them posthigh school, post-college to find careers and gainful employment that was meaningful,” she said. This disparity planted a seed that Thompson couldn’t shake, and it fuels her today as a college professor and researcher at Northeastern University in Charlotte. Thompson’s interest in understanding equity in education prompted her to study desegregation cases as a student at Vance High School in Charlotte. She wanted to understand how Black children were educated, and how it could be changed to give students more purposeful experiences. Thompson’s parents, both college graduates, had
March-April 2019 | Pride Magazine
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