About Charisse Gulosino

Charisse Gulosino is a coordinator and full professor in the Leadership and Policy Studies Program at the University of Memphis. She earned her doctorate in education from Columbia University and completed postdoctoral training at Brown University's Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy. In 2024, she received the Ellery Earl Crader Professor of Education award at the University of Memphis, which is the highest honor from the College of Education and is given annually to a faculty member who embodies the values of the Crader family. This award recognizes individuals committed to academic freedom, human relations, and the democratic process and highlights their outstanding achievements in teaching, service to the profession, and research.

Charisse’s research evaluates educational policies and programs with a specific interest in school choice that enhances education access, equity, efficiency, and results-based accountability. Charisse has served (2006-2010; 2019-2022) as chair and program chair of the American Educational Research Association's Charters and School Choice SIG. She was a Visiting Scholar/Professor at the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley, from 2019-2020. She also serves as an Affiliate Faculty member at the Center for Research in Education Policy (CREP) within the College of Education at the University of Memphis. Her work has appeared in edited books and journals, including the Peabody Journal of Education, Planning and Changing Journal, Urban Education, Education Policy Analysis Archives, Education Economics, and Education Finance and Policy. (Here is where you can access her research >)

On a national level, her research has been cited in journals, education agencies (i.e., Education Commission of the States, National Charter School Resource Center), academic blogs, and at different media outlets, including press inquiries and interview requests (i.e., New York Times; Education Week; Chalkbeat; ProPublica; The Commercial Appeal; School Administrator Magazine; Brown University’s Daily Herald; California Matters; and the Hechinger Report). Her research on charter school boards in Massachusetts has been featured by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy. Her work on suburban and rural charter schools has been cited in a recent New York Time article. She served on the Technical Review Panel for the National Household Education Surveys (NHES) on homeschooling and virtual schools, sponsored by USDOE’s National Center for Education Statistics. She has worked with The Forum on the Future of Public Education at the University of Illinois Urbana Champagne as a Forum Fellow and the Network of Independent Charter Schools Project (funded by the U.S. Department of Education) to guest blog posts on current school choice programs and charter school issues.

Charisse's impact extends beyond her research and academic roles. She has leveraged the extensive experience gained from her dissertation work and writing for a general audience to create a dozen start-up charter schools in New York City, Newark, and Memphis. Her collaborative approach, working in concert with boards, school leaders, and community-based organizations, has strengthened school programs, accountability, equity, and continuous improvement systems. However, her influence is not limited to these initiatives. Throughout the pandemic, she has dedicated herself to mentoring aspiring school leaders, guiding them in conducting improvement projects from a range of perspectives and methodologies, such as Improvement Science, Design-Based Implementation Research (DBIR), Lean for Education, Six Sigma, and Networked Improvement Communities (NICS).