Associate Professor Melissa Michelson received her Ph.D. from Yale in 1994 and has held teaching positions at California State University, Fresno, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. She joined the Cal State East Bay faculty in September 2004.

Dr. Michelson maintains a personal website with links to her current syllabi and recent publications.

Her teaching interests include state and national institutions, political behavior, voting and elections, and race and ethnicity (particularly Latino politics).

Her research interests include Latino and Asian immigrant political incorporation, Latino voting behavior, and voter mobilization. She has employed student research assistants in writing many of the articles below.

Her publications include:
Forthcoming. Lisa García Bedolla and Melissa R. Michelson. "What Do Voters Need to Know? Testing the Role of Cognitive Information in Asian American Voter Mobilization." American Politics Research.
2008. Lavariega Monforti, Jessica and Melissa R. Michelson. "Diagnosing the Leaky Pipeline: Continuing Barriers to the Retention of Latinas and Latinos in Political Science." PS: Political Science and Politics 41, 1 (Jan.): 161-166.
2007. "All Roads Lead to Rust: How Acculturation Erodes Latino Immigrant Trust in Government." Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 32, 2 (Fall): 21-46.
2006. "Mobilizing the Latino Youth Vote: Some Experimental Results." Social Science Quarterly 87, 5 (Dec.): 1188-1206.
2006. "APSA Fund Successfully Mentoring Latino Scholars." PS: Political Science and Politics 39, 4 (Oct.): 949-951.
2006-2007. "Mobilizing Latino Voters for a Ballot Proposition." Latino(a) Research Review 6, 1-2 (Summer): 33-49.
2006. "Mobilizing the Latino Youth Vote: Some Experimental Results." Forthcoming in Social Science Quarterly (December).
2006. "Mobilizing Latino Voters for a Ballot Proposition." Forthcoming in Latino(a) Research Review, 6, 1-2 (Summer).
2005. "Meeting the Challenge of Latino Voter Mobilization." Annals of Political and Social Science, 601, (Sept.): 85-101.
2005. "Does Ethnicity Trump Party? Competing Vote Cues and Latino Voting Behavior." Forthcoming in the Journal of Political Marketing.
2004. "What's in a Name: The Power of Fusion Politics in a Local Election" (with Scott J. Susin) in Polity, 36, 2 (Jan.): 301-323.
2003. "The Corrosive Effect of Acculturation: How Mexican-Americans Lose Political Trust" in Social Science Quarterly, 84, 4 (December): 918-933.
2003. "Getting Out the Latino Vote: How door-to-door canvassing influences voter turnout in rural Central California" in Political Behavior, 25, 3 (September): 247-263.
2003. "Political Efficacy Among California Latinos." Latino(a) Research Review, 5, 2-3 (Summer-Fall): 5-15.
2003. "Boricua in the Barrio: Political Trust Among Puerto Ricans." Centro: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, 15, 1 (Spring): 138-151.
2002. "The Black Reparations Movement: Public Opinion and Congressional Policymaking." Journal of Black Studies, 32, 5 (May): 574-587.
2001. "The Politicization of Mexican-Americans: Naturalization, the Vote, and Perceptions of Discrimination." Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 26, 2 (Fall): 63-85. First author (with Amalia Pallares).
2001. "Political Trust Among Chicago Latinos." Journal of Urban Affairs. 23, 3/4 (Fall): 323-334.
2001. "The Effect of National Mood on Mexican-American Political Opinion." Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences. 23, 1 (February): 57-70.
2000. "Political Efficacy and Electoral Participation of Chicago Latinos." Social Science Quarterly. 81, 1 (March): 136-150.
1998. "How Americans Think About Foreign Military Involvement: The Case of Bosnia." International Studies Notes 23, 2 (Spring): 1-9.
1998. "Explorations in Public Opinion-Presidential Power Linkages: Congressional Action on Unpopular Foreign Agreements." Political Communication 15, 1 (Jan-Mar): 63-82.

Awards:

2007. $435,000 from the James Irvine Foundation to continue evaluation of voter mobilization activities from their California Votes Initiative, July 2007-June 2009.

2006. $5,650 CSU Faculty Support Grant to found a student journal of politics, East Bay Politica.

2005. $350,000 from the James Irvine Foundation to design and conduct an evaluation of voter mobilization activities by 10 major community organizations focusing on increasing turnout of low-propensity ethnic voters (African-American, Latino, Asian-American), and young people, in the June and November 2006 elections, as well as some local elections in Spring 2007.

2003. WPSA Best Paper Award in Chicana/o Politics for "Getting out the Latino Vote: How door-to-door canvassing influences voter turnout in rural Central California"