Roslyn Mickelson

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Chancellor's Professor

Roslyn Arlin Mickelson is Chancellor’s Professor and Professor of Sociology, Public Policy, and Women & Gender Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She taught public high school in Southern California for nine years. After receiving her Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1984 Mickelson held a postdoctoral fellowship in public policy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She has been a faculty member at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte since 1985. Mickelson was selected as a member of the National Academy of Education in 2023. She is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association and the National Educational Policy Center. She became UNC Charlotte’s second Chancellor’s Professor in 2014. Mickelson received the First Citizens Bank Scholar Award in 2011 and UNC Charlotte’s Harshini V. de Silva Graduate Mentoring Award in 2004. She has been invited to be a Visiting Scholar in several US universities and in Australia, Belgium, and Brazil. Mickelson examines the ways that the organizational features of educational institutions interact with the race, ethnicity, gender, and social class of students to shape educational opportunities, teaching and learning processes, and K-16 student outcomes. She presented summaries of her research to then-Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and her findings have been cited in US Supreme Court opinions. Currently, she and her research colleagues are examining the individual characteristics, family background, and school organizational factors that foster or impede college students’ success in attaining STEM degrees. Her forthcoming book is tentatively entitled The Roots of STEM Success.