{"id":4411,"date":"2026-01-28T00:49:20","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T00:49:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2026\/01\/28\/seminar-outlines-research-about-faculty-sexual-misconduct\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T00:49:21","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T00:49:21","slug":"seminar-outlines-research-about-faculty-sexual-misconduct","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2026\/01\/28\/seminar-outlines-research-about-faculty-sexual-misconduct\/","title":{"rendered":"Seminar outlines research about faculty sexual misconduct"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>The Ford School of Public Policy hosted \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/fordschool.umich.edu\/event\/2026\/consequences-faculty-sexual-misconduct\">The Consequences of Faculty Misconduct<\/a>\u201d Monday afternoon, an event showcasing the research of Sarah Cohodes, associate professor of public policy. Cohodes is currently conducting her research within the <a href=\"https:\/\/fordschool.umich.edu\/research-center\/education-policy-initiative\">Education Policy Initiative<\/a> at the Ford School, exploring the long-term academic and career consequences for students who experienced faculty misconduct.<\/p>\n<p>In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Public Policy Professor Kevin Stange, EPI co-director, said the <a href=\"https:\/\/fordschool.umich.edu\/event-series\/epi-speaker-series\">EPI speaker series<\/a> informs students on current education policy topics and conversations.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne of the things we do is put on this seminar series where we bring in experts from around campus \u2026 to talk about a topic of interest and importance in education policy, and whether that\u2019s in K-12 or post-secondary or early childhood,\u201d Stange said.<\/p>\n<p>Opening her lecture, Cohodes said audience members might find the subject matter difficult because the University of Michigan is not exempt from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/news\/news-briefs\/umich-dismisses-stmd-professor-scott-piper-for-violating-sexual-harassment-policies\/\">incidents<\/a> of academic sexual misconduct. Cohodes said power imbalances exacerbate cases of faculty sexual misconduct.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-1    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>\u201cAlmost 20% of students report experiencing some form of sexual harassment in this college setting, and of those who have reported sexual harassment, a little more than 10% report sexual harassment from faculty,\u201d Cohodes said. \u201cIt is perhaps not the biggest problem when it comes to conduct on campus, but I find it especially depressing and tough because it involves people who are in a position of power over students.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Cohodes said her research focuses on how much faculty misconduct affects students\u2019 choices to leave a degree program and if those decisions changed those students\u2019 overall career.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat I\u2019m trying to do with this paper is to figure out: How much does faculty sexual misconduct affect in-field degree completion, and does that response differ over time and by gender?\u201d Cohodes said. \u201cAnd then: If there are shifts in major, do those shifts in major affect students\u2019 career choices and earnings? And if so: Do they perpetuate gender stereotypes?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Cohodes said she answered these questions using information from various open-source databases, including the <a href=\"https:\/\/nces.ed.gov\/ipeds\/\">Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System<\/a>, which gives information on institution characteristics, and <a href=\"https:\/\/collegescorecard.ed.gov\/\">College Scorecard<\/a>, a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ed.gov\/\">U.S. Department of Education<\/a> tool that provides estimates of earnings after graduation. After compiling the data with the <a href=\"https:\/\/academic-sexual-misconduct-database.org\/\">Academic Sexual Misconduct Database<\/a>, Cohodes said large academic departments tend to have more cases of sexual misconduct on average, with a few exceptions.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201c(These departments) just enroll a lot of students, and when there are a lot of humans interacting with each other, there\u2019s more opportunities for misconduct to occur,\u201d Cohodes said. \u201cBut then, there are some much smaller departments which also are toward the top in terms of misconduct \u2014 music, theater, anthropology \u2014 and those tend to involve lots of one-on-one interaction,\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-2    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>Cohodes said changes in enrollment following these incidents are usually minimal, but she found there were often drops in degree completion within the faculty\u2019s field of study after such incidents were exposed.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe found a decline of 3.4% in degree completion in the field where there was a perpetrator,\u201d Cohodes said. \u201cAnd that effect was really driven by incidences after 2014, so incidences in the Me Too era, where that decline was almost twice as large \u2014 a 7% drop.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Rackham student Katie Leu, Cohodes\u2019 co-author, said she enjoyed seeing the audience\u2019s reaction to the study\u2019s findings and she finds students are often unaware of the research being conducted at the University.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe professors here are doing a lot of research, but I guess the students, more broadly, may not really know what they\u2019re doing,\u201d Leu said. \u201cSo I think it\u2019s just kind of important to share that with the broader community, since it\u2019s the part that doesn\u2019t get seen as often.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Cohodes said she hopes her research could push academic institutions to establish better reporting mechanisms, institutional responses, student supports and regulation.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-3    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>\u201cThere is the potential for policy and culture to reduce the impact of such incidents,\u201d Cohodes said. \u201cMy hope is that, while it is the case that people are responding to these incidents by changing fields, that more people become aware of this and the more it is addressed.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><em>Daily Staff Reporter Rebecca Borlace can be reached at <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.michigandaily.com\/news\/government\/education-policy-initiative-seminar-outlines-research-about-faculty-sexual-misconduct\/mailto:rborlace@umich.edu\"><em>rborlace@umich.edu<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p><h3 class=\"jp-relatedposts-headline\"><em>Related articles<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Ford School of Public Policy hosted \u201cThe Consequences of Faculty Misconduct\u201d Monday afternoon, an event showcasing the research of Sarah Cohodes, associate professor of public policy. Cohodes is currently conducting her research within the Education Policy Initiative at the Ford School, exploring the long-term academic and career consequences for students who experienced faculty misconduct. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4412,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[351,4095,4183,1118,4182,2323],"class_list":["post-4411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-faculty","tag-misconduct","tag-outlines","tag-research","tag-seminar","tag-sexual"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4411"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4413,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4411\/revisions\/4413"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}