Mavis G. Sanders University of Maryland, Baltimore County, USA, The Johns Hopkins University

Mavis G. Sanders is assistant professor of education in the School of Professional Studies in Business and Education, research scientist at the Center for Research on the Education of Students Placed at Risk (CRESPAR), and senior advisor to the National Network of Partnership Schools at Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of many articles on the effects of school, fam­ily, and community support on African American adolescents’ school suc­cess, the impact of partnership programs on the quality of family and community involvement, and international research on partnerships. She is interested in how schools involve families that are traditionally hard to reach, how schools meet challenges for implementing excellent programs and practices, and how schools define “community” and develop mean­ingful school-family-community connections. Her most recent book is Schooling Students Placed at Risk: Research, Policy, and Practice in the Education of Poor and Minority Adolescents (Lawrence Erlbaum, 2000). She earned her PhD in education from Stanford University.