Emily Tanner-Smith, Thomson Professor in the University of Oregon’s College of Education, grew up in the rural South in the 1990s. Within her small hometown, poverty birthed an almost certain future of teenage pregnancy, drug addiction or alcoholism for her classmates and their families.
Hope was not often on the menu.
“Because I grew up in this very dysfunctional environment, I always wanted to make a change in the world, and I wanted my scholarship to be a force for good,” Tanner-Smith said. “I really wanted to study how to prevent these things from happening in future generations. “