SERU Senior Researcher, Professor Emerita, Higher Education, University of Washington, Seattle
Maresi Nerad is the founding director of the Center for Innovation and Research in Graduate Education (CIRGE) and a full Professor (tenured) for Higher Education, in the Leadership in Higher Education Program, College of Education, at the University of Washington, Seattle. A native of Germany, Dr. Nerad received her doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley; directed research in the central Graduate Division of UC Berkeley, served as Dean in Residence at the Council of Graduate Schools, D.C., and as Associate Dean of the UW central Graduate School. She was appointed as...
Former Director, Center for Studies in Higher Education and Chancellor Emeritus, UC Santa Cruz
George R. Blumenthal served as Director of the Center for Studies in Higher Education from 2019 until 2023. He continues his involvement with CSHE as Affiliated Faculty and as a member of the ELA Advisory Board.
Blumenthal was UC Santa Cruz's 10th chancellor. He joined the campus in 1972 as a faculty member in astronomy and astrophysics and was named chancellor on September 19, 2007, after serving as acting chancellor for 14 months.
The Blumenthal era has been marked by a commitment to ensuring that the doors of opportunity at UC Santa Cruz are open to all:
Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Philosophy & Linguistics, UC Davis
Robert C. May is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Linguistics at UC Davis. He received his Ph.D. in Linguistics and Philosophy from MIT in 1977, and his Bachelor’s degree from Swarthmore College. Prof. May joined the UC Irvine faculty in 1986, and moved to UC Davis in 2006. He held the Venice Chair in Philosophy of Language and Theoretical Linguistics, a Fulbright Distinguished Professorship, and visiting positions at Columbia University, Ecole Normale Superieure, and Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales.
SERU Principal Researcher; Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Public Policy, University of California, Riverside
Sociology and Public Policy, University of California, Riverside
Steven Brint is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at the University of California, Riverside, Director of the Colleges & Universities 2000 Project, and a Principal Researcher in the SERU Consortium.
Brint is an organizational sociologist whose research focuses on topics in the sociology of higher education, the sociology of professions, and middle-class politics. His studies of higher education have been funded for two decades by the National Science Foundation and two philanthropies. He is the author of four books: The Diverted Dream (with Jerome Karabel) (...
Igor Chirikov is the Director of the Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) Consortium and Senior Researcher at CSHE. SERU Consortium is an academic and policy research collaboration based at Center for Studies in Higher Education at the UC Berkeley working in partnership with the University of Minnesota, the International Graduate Insight Group (i-graduate) and member universities. The Consortium is a group of leading research-intensive universities that increase student success by generating and analyzing comparative data on the student experience.
Amal Kumar is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Administration at the California State University, Sacramento. His teaching and research explore the evolving relationships between public higher education and its institutional, political, and social contexts through rigorous interdisciplinary engagement between organizational theory, public policy, and history. Current interests include policy intermediaries, educational innovation and entrepreneurship, and equity in the American professoriate. His work has been published in Higher Education, CSHE’s ...
Assistant Professor - Graduate School of Education, UC Berkeley
Tolani Britton uses quasi-experimental methods to explore the impact of policies on students’ transition from secondary school to higher education, as well as access and retention in higher education. Recent work explores whether the disproportionate increase in incarceration of Black males for drug possessions and manufacture increased gaps in college enrollment rates by race and gender over two time periods- after the passage of the Anti-Drug Act from 1986 - 1993 and after the passage of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act from 1995 - 2000.
John Aubrey Douglass is Senior Research Fellow and Research Professor - Public Policy and Higher Education at the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE) at the University of California - Berkeley. He is the author of Neo-Nationalism and Universities (Johns Hopkins Univeristy Press 2021), ...
Institutional Research, Assessment, and Policy Analysis and Office for Student Affairs, University of Idaho
Dr. Krista M. Soria (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Leadership and Counseling at the University of Idaho. She is a critical quantitative researcher seeking to investigate the most equitable and inclusive programmatic practices and institutional conditions to prepare students to engage in the complexities of social change. She examines how higher education institutions can create a more supportive campus climate for students from diverse backgrounds, whether programs are equitably accessible and beneficial to all students, and how we can create structural conditions to support...