Faculty Profiles
Dr. Dana Thompson Dorsey
Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies
E-mail: dnthompsondorsey@usf.edu
Office: USF Tampa Campus
Google Scholar Profile
Dana N. Thompson Dorsey, JD, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership
and Policy Studies at the University of South Florida. Her research and teaching focuses
on education law and policy issues, as well as critical race studies. Specifically,
Dr. Thompson Dorsey’s research critically examines federal, state, and local education
laws and policies, as well as PreK-20 school and university practices, and how they
influence equity, access, and opportunities for historically minoritized students
and communities. Her research focuses primarily on issues related to school segregation,
school discipline, the school-to-prison pipeline, race-based admissions policies in
higher education, school choice policies, as well as implicit bias and culturally
responsive school policies and practices.
In addition, Dr. Thompson Dorsey designs and conducts professional development programming
that addresses racial equity and culturally proficient policies and practices for
school districts, corporations, and other organizations and governmental entities.
She is published in numerous leading education journals, such as Teachers College
Record, Educational Administration Quarterly, Peabody Journal of Education, and Educational
Policy, and currently serves as a co-editor for Educational Researcher (2019-2023).
Dr. Thompson Dorsey has received grant funding from the Spencer and Gates Foundations
for her research. She is often interviewed on or quoted in national and local media
outlets, including the New York Times and National Public Radio (NPR), where she is
recognized as an expert on racial equity and education law and policy issues.
Dr. Thompson Dorsey received a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Pittsburgh
School of Education with concentrations in Social and Comparative Analysis in Education
and Policy Studies. Additionally, she earned a J.D. from the University of Pittsburgh
School of Law, and a B.S. in Accounting from The Lincoln University of Pennsylvania.
Before her faculty and administrative appointments at USF, Dr. Thompson Dorsey was
an Associate Professor and the Associate Director for the Center for Urban Education
at the University of Pittsburgh. Moreover, Dr. Thompson Dorsey was an Assistant Professor
of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill, a Senior Research Analyst for COSMOS Corporation, a research, evaluation and
policy firm in the Washington, DC area, and a post-doctoral fellow at the University
of Virginia. Prior to working in academia, Dr. Thompson Dorsey was a practicing attorney
specializing in employment discrimination and civil rights litigation.