Dancy joined
Davidson College as a visiting
assistant professor in 2002. 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 ==