Maithreyi Gopalan is an associate professor at the University of Oregon. Previously, she was an associate professor of education and public policy at The Pennsylvania State University where she was also a Social Science Research Institute (SSRI) co-funded faculty. She served as the inaugural data science impact fellow in the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) at the U.S. Department of Education in 2023-24. She worked in the financial data analytics industry for nearly a decade in India and the United Kingdom before her doctoral training in public policy.
PhD, Public Affairs, O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA), Indiana University, Bloomington, IN (2018)
MA, Economics. Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune, India (2004)
BA, Economics. Stella Maris College, University of Madras, Chennai, India (2002)
Inaugural Data Science Impact Fellow, Office for Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Education (2023-24)
Finalist – Mellon Emerging Faculty Leaders Award, Institute for Citizens & Scholars (March 2022)
National Study of Learning Mindsets Visiting Fellow, Population Research Center, University of Texas, Austin (Jan-Mar 2020)
Most Recent 10 publications:
Gopalan, M., Asson, S., Cattell Jr., M. & Frankenberg, E. Historical Patterns and Trends in Racial/Ethnic Disproportionality in School Discipline in the US. (Forthcoming). Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World. https://doi.org/10.1177/23780231241285105
Gopalan, M., Jung, J., Chiang, S., Linden-Carmichael, A. & Lanza, S. College Students’ Sense of Belonging and Alcohol Use amidst COVID: Evidence from a 21-day Daily Diary Study (Forthcoming). PLOS One
Stubblebine, A., Gopalan, M., & Brady, S. (2024) Who Feels Like They Belong? Personality and Belonging in Students’ First Year of College. PLOS One. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0295436
Jung, J. & Gopalan, M. (2023) The Stubborn Unresponsiveness of Youth Voter Turnout to Civic Education: Quasi-experimental Evidence from State-Mandated Civics Tests. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. https://www.doi.org/10.3102/01623737231195887.
Gopalan, M., & Edara, R. (2023). Health Policies as Education Policies? A Review of Causal Evidence and Mechanisms. AERA Open, 9. https://doi.org/10.1177/23328584231177616
Yang, L.K.. & Gopalan, M. (2023). The Effect of School Shootings on School District Finance and Staffing Decisions. Education Finance and Policy, 18 (2). https://direct.mit.edu/edfp/article-abstract/18/2/277/100732
Walton, G. M., Murphy, M. M., Logel, C., Yeager, D. S., Goyer, J. S., Brady, S. T., Emerson, K. T. U., Paunesku, D., Fotuhi, O., Blodorn, A., Boucher, K. L., Carter, E., Gopalan, M., Henderson, A., Kroeper, K. M., Murdock-Perriera, L. A., Reeves, S. L., Ablorh, T. T., Ansari, S., Chen, S., Fisher, P., Galvan, M., Gilbertson, M. K., Hulleman, C. S., Le Forestier, J. M., Lok, C., Mathias, K., Muragishi, G. A., Netter, M., Ozier, E., Smith, E. N., Thoman, D. B., Williams, H. E., Wilmot, M. O., Hartzog, C., Li, X. A., & Krol, N. (2023). Where and with whom does a brief social-belonging intervention promote progress in college? Science. 380 (6644). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.ade4420
Bullinger, L.†, Gopalan, M.†, & Lombardi, C.† (2023) Impacts of Publicly Funded Health Insurance for Adults on Children’s Academic Achievement. Southern Economic Journal, 89(3). https://doi.org/10.1002/soej.12614
Lombardi, C.† & Bullinger, L.† & Gopalan, M.† (2022) Better Late than Never: Effects of Late ACA Medicaid Expansions for Parents on Family Health-related Financial Well-being. INQUIRY: The Journal of Health Care Organization, Provision, and Financing. https://doi.org/10.1177/00469580221133215 Ungated preprint available here: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/q7csj/download
Gopalan, M.† & Lewis, M.† (2022). K-12 Civil Rights Complaints in the US: A Nationwide Analysis. Educational Researcher. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X221130056 Data available here: https://www.openicpsr.org/openicpsr/project/176682/view
She is interested in conducting policy-relevant research that uses interdisciplinary, social science perspectives to examine the causes and consequences of racial and socioeconomic disparities in students’ educational and psychosocial outcomes, such as school discipline, achievement, learning mindsets, and sense of belonging. She primarily uses experimental and quasi-experimental techniques as well as descriptive, quantitative research methods for policy analysis in her research. She hopes to engage more with other burgeoning data science methods to address some of the most persistent issues of educational inequality by fusing her expertise in causal inference with "big data" techniques.