Graduates: Adriane Williams, Ph.D.

Dr. Williams on SisterMentors:

When I joined SisterMentors I had already waited for almost a year to gain access to a school to conduct my dissertation research. I was discouraged and demoralized. I wanted to quit. At the same time, I knew that neither my family back in Memphis nor my partner would let me walk away without fighting. Discovering SisterMentors through a former participant, completely changed my course. Even after a month or more in the group, I was not certain of how I would finish, but I began to believe again that I could and would finish....more

Bio

Dr. Adriane Williams is currently an Assistant Professor at West Virginia University in the College of Human Resources and Education. She has a B.A. in Economics and French from Wellesley College and a M.Ed. from the George Washington University's Graduate School of Education and Human Development. At West Virginia University, she is developing a program in Educational Policy Studies. In addition to teaching graduate students about U.S. educational policy, Dr. Williams teaches courses and conducts research on how poverty affects educational trajectory in the U.S.

In July of 2008, Dr. Adriane Williams deposited her dissertation, "Genuine Invitations: Middle Schools, Parents, and Postsecondary Planning" at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The dissertation is a case study of an urban middle school and its efforts to engage non-college graduate parents in what the school described as its college preparatory mission. An important finding of her work is that there is a significant gap between what is known about the role of parents in college preparation at the middle school level and what is actually in practice, even in a middle school that seeks to address college preparation.

Dr. Williams left her home in Memphis, Tennessee at the age of 14 to attend the Foxcroft School for Girls in Middleburg, Virginia and believes that the middle school counselor who put her on that path knew something about low-income parents and college preparation that everyone working with middle grades students should learn.