Rate My Professor Sara Lopus

Sara Lopus is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Sciences at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, where she has been teaching since 2017, first as Assistant Professor until her promotion in 2022. Before joining Cal Poly, she was a Postdoctoral Research Associate and Lecturer in the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, Department of Sociology, African Studies Program, and Environmental Studies Program at Princeton University from 2015 to 2017. Lopus earned her PhD in Demography from the University of California, Berkeley in 2015, MS in International Agricultural Development from the University of California, Davis in 2009, and BS in Environmental Sciences from the University of California, Berkeley in 2005.

Her fields of interest include population studies, marriage, parenthood and families, food and water security, quantitative methods, and Sub-Saharan Africa. She teaches courses such as Sociology of the Environment (SOC 308), Migration (SOC 321), Quantitative Research Methods (SOC 355), World Population: Processes and Problems (SOC 431), and Professional Development for Sociologists (SOC 464). Lopus has received the Article of the Year Award from the American Sociological Association Family Section in 2019 (with Margaret Frye) for "From privilege to prevalence: Contextual effects of women’s schooling on African marital timing" (Demography, 2018), the Eugene A. and Joan S. Hammel Dissertation Prize in Demographic Studies from UC Berkeley (2015), the Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award from UC Berkeley (2012), and a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award for demographic research in Brazil. Additional funding includes Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activities Grants from Cal Poly (2019, 2023) and College of Liberal Arts Summer Research Grants (2018, 2020). Key publications comprise "No end to hypergamy when considering the full married population" (Population and Development Review, 2024, with Daniela R. Urbina and Margaret Frye), "The demographic transition, with data from Brazil" (Socius, 2024), "COVID-19 lockdowns: Employment disruptions, water access, and hygiene practices in informal settlements in Nairobi" (Social Science & Medicine, 2022, with Nupur Joshi et al.), "Perceived links between climate change and weather forecast accuracy: New barriers to tools for agricultural decision-making" (Climatic Change, 2021, with Zack Guido et al.), and "Intra-marital status differences across Africa’s educational expansion" (Journal of Marriage and Family, 2020, with Margaret Frye). Her scholarship advances understandings of demographic processes, family dynamics, and environmental factors influencing populations in developing contexts.