From the moment that he catapulted into the academy, Dr. Brian A. Burt has distinguished himself as an exceptional researcher, teacher and thinker.
“He is one of the best minds and a sure bet to become a key contributor to research in education for a long time,” says Burt’s mentor, Dr. Jerlando F. L. Jackson, the Vilas Distinguished Professor of Higher Education and the chair of Educational Leadership & Policy Analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Jackson, along with other prominent scholars in higher education, point to Burt’s scholarly productivity, which they say is making an impact on the field.
“Brian has translated his intellectual curiosity into a robust and methodologically rigorous research agenda focused on understanding the experiences of Black men in STEM graduate programs,” says Dr. Laura Perna, the James S. Riepe Professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania.
That research — funded by the National Science Foundation at the tune of $569,702 over five years — will be one of the most comprehensive studies examining Black males in engineering.
Burt — a native of Grand Rapids, Michigan — knew that he wanted to join the teaching profession ever since he was six years old.
“For me, education was a noble and very respectable field,” says the classical-trained pianist who enrolled at Indiana University as a music education major but later changed his major to secondary English education. It was at Indiana University that Burt became interested in research and decided upon graduation from IU to pursue a master’s degree in Educational Policy and Leadership Studies (with a concentration in Higher Education Administration) at the University of Maryland-College Park, where he was taught and mentored by Dr. Sharon Fries-Britt.
