Stephanie M. Phillips is a third year Higher Education Administration doctoral student in the College of Education at the University of Texas at Austin. Phillips earned Bachelor of Arts and Master of Science degrees in Social Work from Texas Southern University and UT, respectively. Her research interests include equity and access in higher education, the role of context in education policy implementation, the impact of social and cultural context on college readiness, the intersection of race, gender, and class on student achievement, and implications for institutional fit for African American undergraduate students. Phillips is currently serving as a Graduate Research Assistant in the Meadows Center for Educational Risk at UT. She will be interning with the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities.