Douglas Lee Lauen joined the Carolina Population Center as a Faculty Fellow in 2019.
Department: Public Policy (and Sociology, adjunct)
Hometown: Denver, CO
Tell us what projects you’re currently working on.
I am finishing up work on a project evaluating early colleges in North Carolina. This project involves a quantitative synthesis of various types of impact estimates to better understand the causal effect of the intervention on long term outcomes. One thing that is exciting about this work is that it involves outcomes that lie within the education sphere (test scores, college completion) and outcomes that lie outside the education sphere (voting, crime), all with population level data rather than survey data.
I am also starting up a project that explores the relationship between school suspension and adult incarceration. We plan to examine the individual and contextual factors that moderate and mediate this relationship.
What are you looking forward to at CPC?
- A strong interdisciplinary intellectual community
- Help with applying for and managing grants
- Help with staffing projects with good people
Could you tell us a little about your path to CPC?
I learned the hard way how difficult it is to manage grants without institutional support. This spurred me to seek affiliation with CPC.
What do you spend your time doing outside of work?
- Being a good dad to two daughters
- Tennis
- Playing guitar and singing
- Running in the woods with my dog
Could you share something you read recently that you really enjoy?
- The Deep Learning Revolution by Terrence J. Sejnowski
- Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee
- The Birth of Loud: Leo Fender, Les Paul, and the Guitar-Pioneering Rivalry that Shaped Rock n Roll by Ian S. Port
- Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc. by Jeff Tweedy