James Earl Davis
James Earl Davis is Interim Dean of the College of Education, and Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies. Previously, he served as Chair of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, and as Associate Dean in the College of Education.
Professor Davis earned a BA in Sociology from Morehouse College, a PhD from Cornell University, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Division of Education Policy at the Educational Testing Service, Princeton, NJ. His research focuses on gender-based educational policy, issues of equity and access in higher education, urban school reform, and gender and cultural studies. Specifically, Professor Davis has investigated social contexts of learning, including various school settings with a concern for how gender and race are related to students' achievement and engagement, particularly Black boys and young men.
His work has appeared in numerous academic journals, including Gender & Society, Urban Education, Youth & Society, American Journal of Evaluation, Review of Research in Education, and Educational Researcher. He is co-author of African American Males in School and Society: Policies and Practices for Effective Education (Teacher College Press) and Black Sons to Mothers: Compliments, Critiques, and Challenges for Cultural Workers in Education (Peter Lang).
A former National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow, Professor Davis has been on the faculty at the University of Delaware and Cornell University. He has also served as a Visiting Scholar in the Institute for Research of Women and Gender at the University of Michigan and in the Center for Education Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His work has been funded by the Spencer Foundation, National Science Foundation, Marcus Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Education. In the local community, Professor Davis is a board member of the YouthBuild Charter School, Public Citizens for Children and Youth, and the Germantown Friends School.