Dr. Scott F. Abernathy is a Texas native who grew up in Fort Worth. He worked for three months with Mother Theresa’s Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, India, while an undergraduate at Dartmouth College. Scott served as an on-the-street mentor for homeless teens in Boston, MA, with The Bridge, a non-profit multi-service youth organization, after graduation, aiming to do service work closer to home. Dr. Abernathy then earned a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction and went on to teach fourth and seventh grade in Wisconsin public schools.

He earned an M.P.A. in domestic policy and then a Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University in order to learn more about the fundamental processes that drove the educational outcomes he was seeking to improve.

Dr. Abernathy is now an associate professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota and a University Distinguished Teaching Professor. He is also the author of two books published by the University of Michigan Press: School Choice and the Future of American Democracy and No Child Left Behind and the Public Schools.

Though Scott claims that becoming a “streetworker” was the most life-changing job he’s ever had, this textbook and the opportunity to educate college gstudents by writing—rather than a subway stop, a squat, or a classroom—is pretty awesome as well.