Brandy S. Faulkner

Brandy S. Faulkner, the Gloria D. Smith Professor of Black Studies at Virginia Tech, is also a collegiate assistant professor in the Department of Political Science.

A member of the Virginia Tech community since 2012, Faulkner’s scholarship has focused on constitutional and administrative law, race and public policy, and critical organization theory.  

Faulkner is an award-winning teacher, inspiring students to exceed their own expectations for learning, intellectual development, and personal growth. She teaches courses in public administration, constitutional law, administrative law, research methods, and the politics of race, ethnicity, and gender. She has supervised more than 10 undergraduate research students in the areas of law and judicial policy.

Faulkner is active in the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations and served for three years as editorial assistant for the journal Administration and Society. Her dissertation examined Supreme Court Justice William Brennan Jr.’s social justice jurisprudence, and she published “Cultural Critical Incidents in Hazardous Occupations: A Preliminary Exploration” (with Tonya Smith-Jackson, Enid Montague, and Chanel Thomas). She is a former research associate at Virginia Tech’s Race and Social Policy Research Center.

In 2014, Faulkner received a Teaching Excellence Award from the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences. Four years later, she received the Diggs Teaching Scholar Award from Virginia Tech.