About
Dr. Samantha Viano

I critically examine endemic challenges in PreK-12 schools and the policies schools adopt in response, with the dual goals of contextualizing the nature of these problems and evaluating the effects of the chosen solutions on traditionally marginalized and racially minoritized students and their teachers.

Specific research strands that fall within this agenda include school improvement, school safety and security, teacher mobility, and online credit recovery. I also study how to better integrate critical theory into quantitative analysis in educational research, especially in relation to measurement of race/ethnicity.

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Dr. Viano is a faculty member in the School of Education in the College of Education and Human Development at George Mason University. She joined the Mason faculty after completing her doctoral studies at Peabody College, Vanderbilt University. She holds a Master of Science in Education degree from Northwestern University and earned a BS in Mathematics from Haverford College. Dr. Viano's teaching and research are greatly informed by her experience teaching high school math in Chicago in addition to experiences as a journalist and educator in West Virginia, Philadelphia, and North Carolina

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Dr. Viano's work has been supported by the Institute of Educational Sciences in the US Department of Education and the National Institute of Justice Comprehensive School Safety Initiative. She was a 2017 National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellow.