Melissa Arnold Lyon

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Melissa (Mimi) is an assistant professor of public policy at the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy at the University at Albany, SUNY. Mimi studies the political economy of education, focusing on inequality, governance, and teacher politics and policy. She is a quantitative social scientist who works at the intersection of education policy, political science, and labor economics. Her aim with this work is to contribute new knowledge that helps to inform how we can make educational systems more equitable for students and teachers. Her current projects center around three interrelated components of the political economy of education: teacher unionization, teacher labor markets, and state-level education governance.

Mimi's content-focused teaching interests are education politics and policymaking, education governance, teacher politics and policy, and labor economics. Methodologically, Mimi's teaching interests include data analysis for policymaking, applied causal inference, and mixed methods research.

Prior to this position, Mimi was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University. She holds a PhD in Education Policy and Social Analysis from Teachers College, Columbia University and a BA in Political Science from Rice University. She also taught middle school and was an instructional coach in Houston, Texas.