Frank Davis, Professor and Director of the Ph.D. Program in Educational Studies

Frank Davis, Professor and Director of the Ph.D. Program in Educational Studies at Lesley University, has been a member of PERG since 1985. In addition to his work with PERG and his administrative duties, Frank teaches graduate-level quantitative methods courses. He performed his doctoral work at Harvard University in mathematics education. He also holds B.A. and M.S. degrees in physics. Before joining the Lesley faculty, he taught mathematics at the University of Massachusetts in Boston (1974-84).

Frank has been involved in many evaluation projects at PERG. Since 1990, he has been a principal evaluator for the Algebra Project, a national project begun by noted civil rights activist Bob Moses and aimed at improving mathematics education for inner and rural middle school students (see also Mary Maxwell West). The evaluation work has been supported by the Lilly, MacArthur, and National Science Foundations, and the Soros Open Society Institute.

Frank was also the co-principal investigator (see also George Hein) of an American Education Research Association (AERA) and National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to train doctoral students interested in program evaluation of science and mathematics programs. This grant was awarded to only four institutions in the United States.

Frank was a Visiting American Educational Research Association Research Fellow at the NSF in 1991-92, and a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University in 1999.