Education
PhD (Education), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
MA (Education), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Billye Sankofa Waters is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Graduate Education programs, including the Doctor of Education program. Her research interests include social foundations in education, qualitative research methods, urban education and community engagement, Black feminism, critical race theory, and critical media literacy. Dr. Sankofa Waters’ most recent publications include the book “We Can Speak for Ourselves”: Parent Involvement and Ideologies of Black Mothers in Chicago; “Oh, You’ll Be Back”: Bridging Identities of Race, Gender, Educator, and Community Partner in Academic Research; and Freedom Lessons: Black Mothers Asserting Smartness of Their Children. Dr. Sankofa Waters is a 2015 Women of Color Leadership Project Fellow of the National Women’s Studies Association, an Education Pioneers alumna who was honored in 2010 with the Core Values Action Award, and is the first graduate of the Black World Studies Program at Columbia College in Chicago.
Previously, Dr. Sankofa Waters was an instructor at the Writing Center of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and East Carolina University. She has worked as a research analyst for the Blue Ribbon Mentor-Advocate Program, Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, and was an after-school director at University of Chicago Charter School Corporation, Donoghue Campus.