Jean Reith Schroedel

Jean Reith Schroedel earned a B.A. in political science from the University of Washington in 1981 and a Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1990. Schroedel spent two years as an assistant professor at Yale University prior to accepting an appointment at CGU in 1991. In 1995 she was promoted to an associate professor with tenure and in 2001 was promoted to full professor in the Department of Politics and Policy. She also serves as the Director of the Applied Women’s Studies Program. Her research and teaching interests encompass a wide range of topics; most of which are linked together by a common thread—to what extent are the concerns of traditionally under-represented groups addressed by the political system within the United States. Schroedel’s research has been supported by grants from major foundations, such as the Haynes Foundation, Bradshaw Foundation, Irvine Foundation, Fletcher Jones Foundation and Social Science Faculty Research Fund. Schroedel has a strong record of doing collaborative research with graduate students. Since coming to CGU, she has jointly published articles with more than twenty graduate students.

Midway through graduate school, Schroedel published her first book, Alone in a Crowd (1985), a study of women employed in non-traditional 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 policymaking process and the extent to which the Constitution acts as a check on presidential encroachment into the legislative arena. A portion of 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 has 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.

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