People

Maruyama was a professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Minnesota.  His primary research has focused on achievement processes in schools, particularly on social processes and on antecedents of educational success; on research methods for educational and other applied settings; and, recently, on action research approaches in challenged communities and engaged scholarship in urban settings.  He has written three books, Basics of Structural Equation Modeling, Research in Educational Settings (with Stanley Deno), and, most recently, Research Methods in Social Relations (8th edition, with Carey Ryan), and numerous articles and chapters. 

His interest in what happens in diverse urban schools began when he became involved in a study of school desegregation while in graduate school. Those interests led him to study a range of issues in schools, including school schedules and structures, teaching approaches such as cooperative learning and conflict resolution, social influence processes, and student background characteristics including poverty, type of housing in which the family lived, language, ability, and race/ethnicity. This work has been facilitated by time he spent in the Saint Paul Public Schools as their director of research, evaluation and assessment. His work expanded beyond schools to look more broadly at how universities engage urban communities to build partnerships addressing key social issues.  He has complemented his substantive interests with methodology interests in structural equation methods, research methods, and program evaluation.

He has held administrative roles that have enriched and informed his research interests, including director of the Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement (CAREI), assistant/associate vice president for multicultural and academic affairs, and associate vice president for system academic administration.  He is a past-president and past secretary treasurer of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI), and edited one of their journals, Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy. He was a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Psychological Society.  His PhD and MA degrees are from the University of Southern California in social psychology, and his BA from Macalester College in psychology.

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