Jean Schroedel is Professor Emerita of Political Science, and the former Thornton F. Bradshaw Professor of Public Policy. Schroedel taught classes on American political development, voting rights, women and the law, women and policy, Congress and policy-making.
She earned her BA in political science from the University of Washington in 1981 and a PhD in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1990. Before her appointment at CGU, Schroedel spent two years as an assistant professor at Yale University.
At CGU, she has served as the director of the Applied Women’s Studies Program, chair of the Department of Politics & Policy, and dean of the School of Politics & Economics. Her research has been supported by grants from major foundations, including the Haynes Foundation, Lear Foundation, Bradshaw Foundation, Irvine Foundation, Fletcher Jones Foundation and Russell Sage Foundation. Schroedel has a strong record of doing collaborative research with graduate students—since coming to CGU, she has jointly published articles with more than 40 graduate students.
Midway through graduate school, Schroedel published her first book, Alone in a Crowd (Temple University Press, 1985), a study of women employed in nontraditional blue-collar occupations. This research was a direct outgrowth of her experiences as a garment worker, bus driver and machinist prior to attending college. Her second book, Congress, the President, and Policymaking: A Historical Analysis (1994), is a longitudinal analysis of the shifting roles of Congress and the president in the policy-making process and the extent to which the Constitution acts as a check on presidential encroachment into the legislative arena. A paper drawn from this research was awarded the Pi Sigma Alpha Prize by the Western Political Science Association in 1992.
Schroedel is probably most well-known for her third book, Is the Fetus a Person: A Comparison of Policies Across the Fifty States (2000), an analysis of the three major fetal policy issues (abortion, drug use by pregnant women, and third-party fetal killings). She found that harmful actions committed by women (i.e., abortion and prenatal drug exposure) are far more likely to be criminalized than are harmful actions committed by men (i.e., acts of violence that result in fetal deaths or injuries). These findings have been written about in most of the major newspapers in the country and have been cited in an amicus curiae Supreme Court brief. In 2001, the American Political Science Association awarded her the prestigious Victoria Schuck Prize for this research.
In 2009, the Russell Sage Foundation published two books, Evangelicals and Democracy in America: Religion and Society and Evangelicals and Democracy in America: Religion and Politics, which Schroedel co-edited with Steven Brint.
Schroedel has spent much of the past decade researching the impact of the Voting Rights Act on the ability of Native Americans to have meaningful access to the ballot box. This research has generated numerous articles, as well as her recently published book Voting in Indian Country: The View From the Trenches. Schroedel also was an expert witness in the Wandering Medicine v. McCulloch and Yazzie v. Hobbs cases, and did research with students that was used in the Poor Bear v. Jackson County and Sanchez v. Cegavske cases.
Co-authored with Christopher Krewson. “Public Views of the United States Supreme Court in the Aftermath of the Kavanaugh Confirmation.” Social Science Quarterly, (2020).
Co-authored with Joseph Dietrich, et al. “Political Trust and Native American Electoral Participation: An Analysis of Survey Data from Nevada and South Dakota.” Social Science Quarterly, (2020).
Co-authored with Melissa Rogers, et al. “Assessing the Efficacy of Early Voting Access on Indian Reservations: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Nevada.” Politics, Groups and Identities, (2020).
With Joey Torres, et al. “The Voting Rights Act’s Pre-Clearance Provisions: The Experience of Native Americans in South Dakota.” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 41, no. 4 (2017): 1-21.
Co-authored with Roger Chin. “Whose Lives Matter: The Media’s Failure to Cover Police Use of Lethal Force Against Native Americans.” Race and Justice: An International Journal, (2017): 1-26.
Co-authored with Artour Aslanian. “A Case Study of Descriptive Representation: The Experience of Native American Elected Officials in South Dakota.” American Indian Quarterly (Volume 41, No. 3, 2017): 250-286.
Co-authored with Ryan Hart. “Vote Dilution and Suppression in Indian Country.” Studies in American Political Development (Volume 29, 2015): 1-28.
Co-authored with Michell Bligh, et al. “Charismatic Rhetoric in the 2008 Presidential Campaign: Commonalities and Differences.” Presidential Studies Quarterly (Volume 43, No. 1, 2013): 101-128.
Co-edited with Steven Brint. Evangelicals and Democracy in America: Religion and Society. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2009.
Co-edited with Steven Brint. Evangelicals and Democracy in America: Religion and Politics. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2009.
Is the Fetus a Person? A Comparison of Policies Across the Fifty States. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000.
Congress, the President and Policy Making: A Historical Analysis. Armont, NY: M.E. Sharpe Inc., 1994.
Alone in a Crowd: Women in the Trades Tell Their Stories. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.