Section Links

• Research Biography
• Degrees
• Key Professional Appointments
• Activities & Honors
• Selected Publications

Research Biography

Degrees

• Ph.D., Educational Policy Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 2001
• M.A., Educational Policy Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 1998
• B.A., Liberal Arts and Sciences/ History, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 1995

Key Professional Appointments

• Assistant Professor, Educational Policy Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 2003--
• Assistant Professor, Educational Leadership & Policy, State University of New York-Buffalo, 2001-2002
• Assistant Professor, History, Millikin University, 2000-2001
• Teaching Assistant, Educational Policy Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 1998-1999

Activities & Honors

• CIC Academic Leadership Fellow—ALP (2010-2011)., Committee on Institutional Cooperation , 2010-2011
• Difference Makers in Our Community Award, eBlack Champaign-Urbana Campus Community Project, 2010
• Board Member, Don Moyers' Boys and Girls Club, 2009- present
• Editorial Board, American Educational Research Journal-Social and Institutional, Editorial Board, American Educational Research Journal-Social and Institutional Analysis, American Educational Research Journal, 2009-2012
• Incomplete List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students, Incomplete List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by their Students, 2009
• Brief of Historians as amicus curiae for the Supreme Court Parents and Meredith (2007) case, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, 2007-2008
• Black Graduate Student Association Faculty of the Year Award, Unknown, 2007
• Incomplete List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007
• Black Graduate Student Association Faculty of the Year Award, Black Graduate Student Association, 2007
• Co-editor of journal, History of Education Quarterly, 2006-2013
• Co-editor, History of Education Quarterly, 2006-2013
• Incomplete List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006
• Outstanding Reviewer Award and Recognition for American Educational Research Association (AERA) journals, AERA, 2006
• Incomplete List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2005
• Incomplete List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2004
• Incomplete List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2003-2004

Selected Publications

• Span, Christopher M.  From Cotton Field to Schoolhouse: African American Education in Mississippi, 1862-1875.  Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009. More about this publication...
• Danns, Dionne and Christopher M. Span (2008).  “A Brief History of Schools in the United States,” in Tom Goodes (Ed.) 21st Century Education (New York: Sage Publication, 265-273.
• Span, C. M. (2003). Knowledge is light, knowledge is power: African American education in antebellum America. In C. C. Yeakey & R. D. Henderson (Eds.), Surmounting all odds: Education, opportunity, and society in the new millennium. Greenwich, CT: Information Age.
• Span, C. M. (2002). "I must learn now or not at all": Social and cultural capital in the earliest educational initiatives of Mississippi ex-slaves, 1862-1869. Journal of African American History, 87(3), 196-205.
• Johnson, L., & Span, C. M. (Eds.) (2002). Historical perspectives on cultural empowerment, activism, and urban school reform. Urban Education, 37(5).