Melissa Dancy

Melissa Dancy is an American physics education researcher and associate professor at North Carolina State University.

In 2025, she was elected as a fellow of the American Physical Society.

Education Dancy completed her undergraduate studies in Physics at Furman University. She was awarded a Bachelor of Science in 1992. She then attended Purdue University where she earned two Master of Science degrees, the first in Physics in 1994 and the second in Science Education in 1996. She was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy from North Carolina State University (NCSU) in 2000 in Physics Education Research. In 2003, she joined Western Carolina University as an assistant professor of Chemistry and Physics. She then was faculty at University of North Carolina at Charlotte and Johnson C. Smith University. She joined University of Colorado Boulder as a research professor in 2010.

Research While working as an independent consultant Dancy was a co-investigator of a grant awarded by the National Science Foundation in 2017 to investigate why white, male physicists fail to mitigate sexism and racism in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Out of the funding, The College Fix noted only one study was produced with a sample size of 27.

The study, "How well-intentioned white male physicists maintain ignorance of inequity and justify inaction", was pre-published on ArXiv in 2022 and published in the in 2023. The study was conducted by Dancy and co-investigator Apriel Hodari, found that among a group of progressive white male physicists there are pervasive patterns of discourse that allow those individuals to maintain their identity as “good” or “equity-minded” while remaining largely inactive in confronting racism and sexism in physics. Patterns identified include distancing oneself from the problem, attributing causes to distant systems, and justifying inaction on grounds of ignorance, discomfort, or lack of agency. Science reported that the study was representative of white privilege in the field, and a widespread lack of awareness about how privilege shapes attitudes and behavior in the field.

Awards and honors

Outstanding Referee, American Physical Society, 2022 Fellow, American Physical Society, 2025

Selected publications