Steven Schlossman is the 2016-17 winner of Dietrich College's top teaching prize, the Elliott Dunlap Smith Award for Distinguished Teaching and Educational Service. He delivered the 2017 Honors Convocation address for Dietrich College during graduation weekend on May 20, and the departmental keynote address on May 21, 2017.

Schlossman is a social and policy historian who specializes in a variety of topics in 19th and 20th century U.S. history, including education, childhood, and parenting; juvenile and criminal justice and corrections; the politics of military recruitment; and the history of sports (especially golf).

His current research in education centers on the history of homework as a divisive problem in American schooling between the 1820s and the present. In the field of criminal justice, his current research focuses on the evolution of juvenile courts and of patterns of delinquency in the first half of the 20th century. On military recruitment, his current work analyzes policy controversies surrounding the draft, the all-volunteer army, and the experiences of gays, blacks, and women in the armed services. And in the history of sports, his research centers on the rise of modern golf (1860 to the present), with equal attention to men's and women's golf, both professional and amateur. On November 9, 2017 he delivered a keynote talk, “Joel Tarr: Applied Historian,” to mark Professor Tarr’s 50th anniversary at Carnegie Mellon University.

Before coming to Carnegie Mellon, Schlossman was on the research staffs of the RAND Corporation (Santa Monica), the California State Department of Justice, and the California State Assembly. He also taught previously at the University of Chicago, Harvard University, and UCLA on topics in the history of education and juvenile justice, and has been a visiting fellow on educational policy topics at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.