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Examining GSAs: Adrienne Mundy-Shephard

Adrienne Mundy-ShephardAfter working as a corporate defense lawyer, doctoral student Adrienne Mundy-Shephard longed for a career in education.

“From the time I was really young, I was concerned about educational equity,” Mundy-Shephard says, noting she often dreamed about opening privately-funded boarding schools for low-income students. It was this idea that initially brought her to the Ed School. Also attractive to Mundy-Shephard was the opportunity to have flexibility in her research interest. “There is the space here to be supported,” says the Harvard College alum.

Once at HGSE, Mundy-Shephard credits two courses -- Associate Professor John Diamond’s Race, Class, and Educational Inequality and Assistant Professor Natasha Warikoo’s Cultural Explanations for Ethnic and Racial Inequality in Education -- with prompting her to consider how the intersection of racial and sexual minority identity impacts school experiences and educational outcomes, particularly in the context of bullying, harassment, and microaggressions and participation in Gay Straight Alliances (GSAs). “This allowed me to build on some of the work that I’d done as an attorney while pursuing my interest in studying racial inequality,” she says.

Her research examines LGBT youth of color and the role of GSAs in high schools. In particular, she plans to study whether and to what extent LGBT youth of color participate in GSAs, as well as the attitudes and opinions of straight youth of color about LGBT people and how this impacts GSA participation by LGBT youth of color. The research will also explore whether LGBT youth of color feel welcome in GSAs, or seek and receive support elsewhere.

Mundy-Shephard says that LGBT youth of color generally choose not to participate in GSAs and her research will examine whether the students’ reasons vary by racial group, and the extent to which these reasons are affected by internal and external perceptions of LGBT identity as being incompatible with racial minority status, i.e., whether they perceive non-heterosexuality as a form of “acting white.”

In order to explore this topic, Mundy-Shephard plans to look at how students of color at racially diverse schools view their schools’ GSAs, their participants and their purposes, as well as the roots of these perceptions. She hopes to discover whether these views vary based on the racial/ethnic identity, socioeconomic status, religiosity, and/or sexual orientation of the students, and if so, what steps schools can take to address bias and ensure that they serve the needs of all of their students.

“The ultimate goal of the study is to further develop the existing literature on school outcomes for LGBT students of color, and to explore possible interventions that might address the existing gaps in academic achievement and mental health,” she says.

Even before coming to Harvard, during her years as a lawyer, she worked in LGBT rights as cochair of the New York City Bar Association’s LGBT Rights Committee and conducted LGBT-related pro bono work as an attorney.

“This is important to me as a black lesbian who wants to support these kids,” says Mundy-Shephard, who Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick recently swore in to the state Commission on GLBT Youth. “When school climate improves for these kids, it will for others as well.”

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