Our Team

About

Corliss Thompson, PhD, serves as special assistant to the dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion, responsible for coordination across the college, to address DEI issues related to the student experience, curriculum, and the workplace culture for faculty and staff.

Her prior work in diversity, equity, and inclusion includes consulting with leaders in higher education, nonprofits, and corporations. She has led workshops and spoken to a wide range of audiences on systemic oppression, implicit bias, and action planning for diversity, equity, and inclusion. Thompson has presented on issues of social justice at academic conferences and practitioner gatherings. She volunteers her DEI expertise in her community and has focused on issues of equity in her scholarship, including a National Science Foundation grant to spur more underrepresented students’ interest in STEM fields.

She is a teaching professor and assistant dean in Northeastern’s Graduate School of Education and has served on the faculty since 2013. She has taught research methods, research design, and social justice courses. Thompson has been involved with NExT, the Global Network of Experiential Educators, at Northeastern since its inception.

Before becoming a faculty member, Thompson worked in a research and evaluation office in a school district and at the University of North Carolina, where she earned her doctoral degree. She also was an elementary school teacher in Charlotte and Chapel Hill, NC. Thompson holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Education from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.