Jameson D. Lopez is an enrolled member of the Quechan tribe located in Fort Yuma, California. He currently serves as an Assistant Professor in the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Arizona. He studies Native American education using Indigenous statistics and has expertise in the limitations of collecting and applying quantitative results to Indigenous populations. He carries unique experiences to his research that include a 2010 deployment to Iraq as a platoon leader where he received a bronze star medal for actions in a combat zone.
From his early adolescence, he traveled to Native nations across the United States to encourage and recruit students to pursue higher educations. During this time, He observed many students succeed and fail to accomplish their postsecondary goals. Considering these experiences, and experiences in students affairs, he recognized contemporary mainstream postsecondary persistence theories diverged from his understandings of influences on Native American postsecondary persistence.
As an Indigenous quantitative researcher with expertise in the limitations of collecting and applying quantitative results to Native American populations, he tends to examine research through tribal critical race theory which contends governmental policies toward Native American focus on the problematic goal of assimilation. This challenge often results in relatively low numbers of Native American voices in comparison to dominant culture voices in quantitative research, but can be overcome through increasing Native American participation in academic and policy discourse, and including Native American voices in quantitative research through Indigenous statistics.
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