Rudy Professor Emeritus Maureen A. Pirog, a O'Neill faculty member since 1983, specializes in social policy and is a national expert on child support. Her research includes child support enforcement, income maintenance and poverty, adolescent parenting, education, policy analysis, and methods of program evaluation and social experimentation. State and U.S. Congressional committees refer to her studies of fairness and equity in the determination of amounts of child support awards. Pirog has been invited by the U.S. General Accounting Office to help shape research agenda in this area. She speaks at conferences around the world organized by academic organizations, state social services agencies, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Pirog is founder and co-director of the Institute for Family and Social Responsibility which provides research expertise and technical assistance to state and national social service organizations and spans all eight Indiana University campuses. Pirog is an affiliated faculty member of the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington and holds an honorary professorship at the State University Higher School of Economics in Moscow. She was recently appointed as a Distinguished Visiting Professor (2015-2020) in the Department of Governance at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa.

For 10 years, Pirog served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, the top ranked policy analysis journal. She is series editor of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management Classics, as well as a member of the editorial board of three other journals. Pirog is also an article, book, and grant reviewer for over 20 journals and grant giving agencies.