Dr. Thad Domina, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

As a sociologist by training, Thurston Domina works in partnership with educational practitioners to better understand the relationship between education and social inequality in the contemporary U.S. His work focuses in two areas:

First, he studies student transitions from middle and high school into higher education. During the course of this transition, students move from the largely undifferentiated instruction of elementary education to the highly stratified U.S. college and university system. Domina seeks to understand how schools undertake this sorting process, how this sorting process shapes students’ life chances, and how educational policies and educator practices can expand opportunities for all.

Second, he studies the interaction between families and schools in an attempt to understand processes through which out-of-school factors influence the distribution of educational opportunity.