Lynch School welcomes new
Cawthorne Millennium Professor

Stella M. Flores, a national expert on the impact of federal, state, and institutional policy on the college access and success of low-income, underrepresented, and immigrant students across the K–20 pathway, has been named the John E. Cawthorne Millennium Chair Professor in the Lynch School of Education and Human Development.

Previously a professor of higher education and public policy at the University of Texas at Austin, where she held cross-school appointments in the departments of Education, Leadership and Policy, and Curriculum and Instruction, Flores also served as director of research and strategy at UT-Austin’s Education Research Center. Prior to UT-Austin, she was an associate professor of higher education at New York University and served as the associate dean at NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture.

As Cawthorne Professor, she will teach in the department of Educational Leadership and Higher Education, said Stanton E.F. Wortham, the Charles F. Donovan, S.J., Dean of the Lynch School.

“We are thrilled to have Stella Flores join us as a member of the Lynch School faculty,” said Wortham.  “Her work on education policy has been recognized for years as particularly influential. She will collaborate with our other strong scholars of education policy to create a hub for groundbreaking, visible work that will shape the field.”

Her current research examines compelling issues throughout the spectrum of education, often referred to as “K-20” (from kindergarten through the college/university level): the long-term outcomes of state financial aid programs, the role of immigration and citizenship status in shaping educational attainment, and the potential for artificial intelligence tools to support research and policy analysis in education and workforce systems. She has published widely on demographic changes in American schools, affirmative action in higher education, financial aid policies, college completion, and minority-serving institutions.

Flores is the second holder of the John E. Cawthorne Chair, named for the longtime Lynch School associate dean and scholar of urban education, who died in August 2014. She succeeds Marilyn Cochran-Smith, who had served as Cawthorne Professor from 2004 until her retirement in 2023.  

“Boston has always felt like a second home since my time here as a graduate student, so it is a privilege to return as a faculty member,” said Flores.  “I am honored to join a community whose intellectual excellence and deep care for students and society set the highest standard for higher education. I look forward to shaping the next generation of human-centered research and practice in this transformational era.”

Flores launched her academic career at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of Education and Human Development where she served as an associate professor of public policy and higher education and held a secondary appointment in the Sociology Department.

She also served as a congressional evaluator with the United States Government Accountability Office and as a program specialist with the U.S. Economic Development Administration.

Flores has held numerous positions at the American Educational Research Association, including serving as a board member, and since 2021, co-editor of the journal AERA Open.  She also serves on the boards of the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, Institute for Higher Education Policy, and Association for Hispanics in Higher Education, and as a doctoral student mentor for the National Academy of Education and the Spencer Foundation.  

In 2019, Flores received the Harvard Graduate School of Education Alumni Council Award for Outstanding Contribution to Education, and she was named “One of the Top 25 Women in Higher Education and Beyond” by Diverse Issues Magazine in 2017.  She has also been recognized as one of the top 200 scholars in Education Week’s RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings consecutively since 2015.

A native of Edinburg, Tex., Flores earned doctoral and master’s degrees in education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, a master of public affairs degree from UT-Austin, and a bachelor’s degree from Rice University.