Danica Brown worked on revising her area exam, preparing her dissertation and conducting data analysis for a research paper during a scholarly retreat in the Woods in the fall of 2018.

Danica is a Ph.D. candidate in the City, Culture, and Community program in the Department of Sociology. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics with a concentration in Secondary Education and minor in Spanish from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge (LSU). She received a Master of Natural Science with a focus in mathematics also from LSU.

Her desire to pursue a doctoral degree and her research interests emerged from working in charter schools in New Orleans as a mathematics teacher and as a teacher leader.

Danica’s research interests include school choice policy and college access for historically underrepresented groups, community engagement in school and district level decision-making and educational policy change in urban school systems. Danica is particularly interested in research that positively affects youth and the community.