Associates

Dorothy Leland, Ph.D.

Chancellor Emerita (2019), University of California, Merced – Merced, California; Former President, Georgia College and State University – Milledgeville, Georgia

Dorothy J. Leland was appointed the third chancellor of the University of California, Merced on May 18, 2011. An accomplished institution builder, Leland is playing a significant role in providing educational and economic opportunity to one of the fastest-growing regions of the state as she leads the next major phase of development for the newest University of California campus.

Chancellor Leland has paved the path for the largest public-private partnership in higher education, known as the Merced 2020 Project. The unprecedented $1.3 billion expansion will nearly...

Richard J. Edelstein

Senior Research Associate

Richard J. Edelstein is a Senior Research Associate at Berkeley’s Center for Studies in Higher Education where he collaborates with John Douglass, Senior Research Fellow, on studies of the impact of globalization on higher education institutions. He is also Principal and Managing Director at Global University Concepts, a higher education consultancy he launched to advise universities on international strategies and the development of partnerships and alliances with foreign institutions. He was Director of International Affairs for six years at AACSB International, the primary U.S....

Marian Gade

Former CSHE Deputy Director, Clark Kerr Associate

Marian Gade serves as Secretary of the UC Retirees’ Association at Berkeley (UCRAB) and as one of its representatives on the UC Berkeley Retirement Center Advisory Board. She also served 5 years as chair of the statewide Council of University of California Retiree Associations (CUCRA).


Marian was a Research Associate with UC President Emeritus Clark Kerr for 35 years both with the University and through other sources. Together they worked on a variety of projects, mainly involving studies of college and...

Saul Geiser

Senior Associate

Saul Geiser is a research associate at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from UC Berkeley and taught there before joining UC’s Office of the President in 1981. Geiser served as director of admissions research for the UC system after Californians voted to end affirmative action in 1996, and he helped redesign UC admissions policy. His work has focused on issues of equity and validity in college admissions, with the aim of identifying admissions criteria that have less adverse impact on low-income and...

Diane Harley, Ph.D.

Retired Senior Researcher

Diane Harley, Ph.D., directed the Higher Education in the Digital Age (HEDA) project at the Center for Studies in Higher Education. At CSHE, she created and directed research initiatives focusing on the policy implications of integrating information and communication technologies into complex academic environments.

Dr. Harley is a biosocial anthropologist with a Ph.D. in anthropology from UC Berkeley; her approach has emphasized the concurrent analysis of social, economic...

Karen Merritt

Senior Associate University History

From 2006 to the present, Karen Merritt has been a Visiting Scholar and Associate of the Center for Studies in Higher Education, University of California, Berkeley.

Merritt is the co-editor (with Jane Lawrence) of From Rangeland to Research University: The Birth of the University of California, Merced, a chronicle of the founding of UC’s tenth campus published by Jossey-Bass in 2007. She is currently working on a book about the role of the University of California and the Sierra Club in the founding of the National Park Service.

Merritt received her B.A. in English literature...

Brian Murphy

President Emeritus De Anza College

Brian Murphy, Ph.D., served De Anza College as its president for fourteen years, a tenure distinguished by a commitment to equity, student civic and political engagement, and academic excellence. Murphy taught political theory and Urban Politics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Clara University, and San Francisco State University, where he directed the San Francisco Urban Institute. He served as the principle legislative consultant for the California State Legislature’s 1980s review of California’s Master Plan for Higher Education and the Legislature’s redrafting of...

Patricia A. Pelfrey

Senior Research Associate Emerita

Senior Research Associate, Center for Studies in Higher Education. Co-author (with Margaret Cheney) of A Brief History of the University of California (University of California Press, 2004) and editor of The Pursuit of Knowledge: Speeches and Papers of Richard C. Atkinson (University of California Press, 2007). Her most recent book is Entrepreneurial President: Richard Atkinson and the University of California, 1995-2003 (University of California Press, 2012), a study of the Atkinson presidency and the principal issues facing the University of California during...

Xia Teng

Former Senior Associate for the Berkeley Institute on Higher Education

Xia Teng is an associate at CSHE. Dr. Teng served as senior associate for CSHE’s Berkeley Institutes on Higher Education (BIHE), which is designed for higher education leaders around the world to broaden their understanding of university governance and functions, American higher education, and the University of California in particular. Since 2012, the customized programs attracted around 180 university presidents, vice presidents, and senior administrators from about 135 institutes from Asia.

Prior to joining CSHE, Teng worked as a researcher in Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and...

Ami Zusman

Former Coordinator of Graduate Education Planning & Analysis, University of California system, UCOP

Ami Zusman previously served as Coordinator of Graduate Education Planning and Analysis for the University of California system, where she directed graduate and professional education planning and policy, as well as student outcomes assessment. She developed long-range graduate enrollment plans for the UC system, created instruments to measure and compare graduate student success, and was the lead UC liaison for the National Research Council’s assessment of doctoral programs, among other activities. Ami also authored or was principal staff for University-wide reports on interdisciplinary...