A leading researcher on child and family policy and co-author of two recent Pew Charitable Trusts studies on economic mobility, Leonard Lopoo, has been named director of the Center for Policy Research (CPR), the oldest interdisciplinary social science research program at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. Lopoo is associate professor of public administration and international affairs at the school.
“I am very pleased that Professor Len Lopoo has agreed to serve as the next director of the Center for Policy Research,” says Maxwell School Dean James Steinberg. “Len is a talented researcher, a gifted teacher and a respected faculty member who will be an outstanding leader of one of Maxwell’s largest and most prestigious interdisciplinary units. His appointment is effective immediately.”
Lopoo joined the Maxwell faculty in 2003, when he also became a senior research associate at CPR. He has won numerous awards, including the Maxwell School’s Daniel Patrick Moynihan Award for Outstanding Teaching, Research and Service and the Birkhead-Burkhead Teaching Excellence Award and Professorship from the school’s Department of Public Administration.
Lopoo received his Ph.D. from the Harris School at the University of Chicago and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. His research focuses primarily on issues relating to the family: fertility, marriage, maternal employment and the public policies designed to assist the low-income population. He has published in a range of journals, including Demography, the Journal of Health Economics, the Journal of Human Resources, the Journal of Public Economics and the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, for which he has been the social policy co-editor since 2008.
CPR was established in 1994; it absorbed the Maxwell School’s famed Metropolitan Studies Program that was created in 1961. The center includes faculty from across Maxwell, mainly economics, public administration and sociology. This collection of specialists brings a depth of experience and skill to research and offers students a wealth of opportunity for discussion and advice on their own research, as well as the possibility of research assistantships on projects directed by the faculty. CPR also provides a base for visiting scholars from the United States and abroad. In addition to their teaching responsibilities, faculty typically work on a variety of research grants related to public policy, which involve graduate students as assistants. Faculty also consult regularly with government agencies and other institutions concerned with the issues they are studying.
In accepting the position, Lopoo observed that “The Center for Policy Research has long been the home of some of the most influential thinkers in the public policy arena. I am honored to work with such a distinguished group and look forward to our continued growth.”
