Education Policy Speaker Series

Dr. Dominique Baker
Assistant Professor Education Policy and Leadership

Dominique Baker is an Assistant Professor of Education Policy in the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development. Her research focuses on the way that education policy affects and shapes the access and success of underrepresented students in higher education. She has received an AERA research grant for 2020-2021 to study course-taking and student loan debt in Texas. She primarily investigates student financial aid, affirmative action, and policies that influence the ability to create an inclusive & equitable campus climate. Some of the journals that have published her work include the American Educational Research Journal, Journal of Higher Education, Journal of College Student Development, and Teachers College Record. She currently sits on the editorial boards of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, the Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, Review of Higher Education, and Research in Higher Education.

She earned her Ph.D. in Higher Education Leadership and Policy Studies from Peabody College at Vanderbilt University. She was the recipient of an Association for Institutional Research dissertation grant, Vanderbilt University Provost’s Graduate Fellowship, Vanderbilt University Experimental Education Research Training Fellowship, and UCEA Barbara L. Jackson Scholarship. She has been named a Thomas B. Fordham Institute and American Enterprise Institute Emerging Education Policy Scholar. She earned her Master of Education in Student Affairs Practice in Higher Education and Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of Virginia. Prior to pursuing her Ph.D., Dominique served as an Assistant Dean in the Office of Undergraduate Admissions at the University of Virginia. At SMU, she teaches public policy and policy analysis courses at the doctoral level and equity and access courses at the master’s level.