Rate My Professor Jameson D. Lopez

Jameson D. Lopez is an enrolled member of the Quechan tribe and serves as an Associate Professor in the Educational Policy Studies and Practice department within the College of Education at The University of Arizona, where he joined the faculty in 2018. He earned a B.A. in Elementary Education from American Indian College in 2008, an M.A. in Curriculum and Instruction from Arizona State University in 2013, and a Ph.D. in Educational Policy and Evaluation from Arizona State University in 2018, with a dissertation titled 'To Help Others Like Me: Quechan and Cocopah Persistence for Nation Building.' Prior to his academic career, Lopez served as a Platoon Leader in the United States Army from 2008 to 2012, including a 2010 deployment to Iraq where he received the Bronze Star Medal for actions in a combat zone. His earlier roles include Research Assistant at Arizona State University, Intern at WestEd, and Field Representative at American Indian College.

Lopez's research focuses on Native American postsecondary persistence, Indigenous statistics, survey research, and Indigenous data collection, integrating Indigenous knowledge with Western scientific methods to address limitations in quantitative research applied to Indigenous populations and advance data sovereignty. He teaches graduate courses such as Critical Quantitative Methods, Statistical Analysis in Higher Education, Survey Methods in Higher Education, Indigenous Statistics and Survey Research, and Applied Factor Analysis. Key publications include 'Factors Influencing American Indian and Alaska Native Postsecondary Persistence: AI/AN Millennium Falcon Persistence Model' (Research in Higher Education, 2018, 130 citations), 'Race without Gender? Trends and Limitations in the Higher Education Scholarship Regarding Men of Color' (Review of Educational Research, 2022, 37 citations), 'Giving Back: Deconstructing Persistence for Indigenous Students' (Journal of College Student Development, 2021), 'Indigenous Data Collection: Addressing Limitations in Native American Samples' (Journal of College Student Development, 2020), and 'Postsecondary Research and Recommendations for Federal Datasets with American Indians and Alaska Natives' (Journal of American Indian Education, 2018). His scholarship has contributed innovative models for Native American persistence in higher education and enhanced quantitative empiricism within Indigenous contexts. Lopez has received the University of Arizona Early Career Scholars Award (2021), Erasmus Circle Fellow (2021), Diverse: Issues in Higher Education Emerging Scholar (2021), Association for the Study of Higher Education Special Merit Award (2020), American Indian College Alumni of the Year (2018), and Quechan Indian Tribe Education Lifetime Achievement Award (2017), among others.