About

Becca Spindel Bassett, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Higher Education at the University of Arkansas. She earned her doctorate from Harvard University in 2022 while serving as a Radcliffe Fellow. Her research aims to understand how institutions of higher education in the United States can shift their practices, policies, and power structures to enact the equity missions they so often espouse. She is particularly concerned about the treatment of low-income, first-generation students of color, whose journeys through college are too often unnecessarily difficult, risky, and costly.

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Becca's commitment to equity in higher education was recognized by the AAC&U, who named her a K. Patricia Cross Future Leader of Higher Education in 2022. As a scholar-practitioner, Becca actively supports a group of young leaders from Mississippi. Prior to beginning her doctorate, Becca founded the Alumni College Success Program at the Sunflower County Freedom Project, an educational and leadership nonprofit in the Mississippi Delta. Now in its seventh year, the ACSP is grant funded and provides holistic, intensive support to 25 college students. Before that, Becca taught 3rd grade for two years in Lyon, Mississippi and worked as a Program Director at the Sunflower County Freedom Project.

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Becca attended Brown University, where she studied Cultural Anthropology with a focus in international development. She is from Urbana, Illinois and has lived in Côte d'Ivoire, France, England, and Chile.

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She currently lives with her husband, daughter, and dog in Fayetteville, Arkansas.