On April 17, 2014, the College of Charleston will host Roslyn Mickelson, an expert in school reform. She will speak at 4:30 p.m. in room 235 of the Robert Scott Small Building (175 Calhoun St.). The event is free and open to the public.

Her studies have concluded that children of any race who attend diverse schools are more likely to succeed, in areas like graduating, avoiding crime and attending college. She’ll talk about this in her presentation, entitled “Majors, Leavers, and Avoiders: The Interactive Influences of Gender, Race, Social Class, and Institutional Forces along the Pathway to STEM Degrees in North Carolina.”

[Related: Read about Mickelson’s research in a 2013 New York Times article.]

Mickelson’s research focuses on the political economy of schooling and school reform, particularly the relationships among race, ethnicity, gender, class, and educational organization, processes, and outcomes. She investigated school reform in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools from 1988 to 2008, focusing on the ways integration and resegregation influenced educational equity and academic achievement. Her coedited book, Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow: The Past, Present, and Future of (De)segregation in Charlotte will be published in 2014 by Harvard Education Press.

Roslyn Arlin Mickelson is professor of sociology and public policy at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. In 2011, Mickelson received the First Citizens Bank Scholar Award from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in recognition of her career as a distinguished scholar. She is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association and the National Educational Policy Center.

For more information about this event, contact Lauren Saulino at saulinole@cofc.edu.