History of Higher Education

Laura Hamilton

Professor and Chair of Sociology at the University of California-Merced

Laura Hamilton is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Merced, and co-founder of the Higher Education, Race, & the Economy (or HERE) Lab. Her award-winning books include: Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality, Parenting to a Degree: How Family Matters for College Women’s Success, and most recently Broke: The Racial Consequences of Underfunding Public Universities. Her work examines the ways in which postsecondary organizations and higher education funding structures work to create and maintain racial and class inequities.

David P. Earwicker, Ph.D.

David Earwicker is Principal and Founder of Aspen Insight Consulting, a higher education research development firm. He holds a PhD in Education Policy from the University of California, Davis, an M.A. in Middle East Affairs/Islamic Culture Studies from Columbia University, and a B.A. in Economics and International Relations from UC Davis.

During 2022-23 he is a Visiting Scholar with the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE) at the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley. At CSHE, under the sponsorship of John Aubrey Douglass, his research work is...

Anne MacLachlan

Senior Research Associate and Visiting Scholars Coordinator

Anne J. MacLachlan is a retired senior researcher at CSHE who continues to be devoted to increasing access, persistence, and success in postsecondary education for underrepresented groups (URM) including domestic minorities, women, and those from uneducated/poor families with an emphasis on those in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). Her research areas cover the spectrum of postsecondary populations including community college and transfer students, undergraduates in general, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and faculty. Among these, doctoral...

Cristina González

Professor Emerita, School of Education & Department of Spanish, UC Davis
Education

Ph.D., Spanish – Indiana University, Bloomington – 1981

Select Publications Books

Clark Kerr's University of California: Leadership, Diversity and Planning in Higher Education (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2011).

Articles “Higher Education Reasserts its Role as a Public Good,” University World News, 422, July 15, 2016. Liliana Pedraja, Co-Author. “Privatization and Access: The Chilean Higher Education Experiment and Its Discontents,” Research and Occasional Papers Series, Center for Studies in Higher Education, University of California, Berkeley, CSHE...

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...

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...

James A. Hyatt, M.B.A.

Senior Research Associate, Vice Chancellor for Budget & Finance and CFO Emeritus, Former Associate Director, Center for Studies in Higher Education, University of California, Berkeley

James A. Hyatt is a Senior Research Associate and Principal Investigator at the Center for Studies in Higher Education. He has extensive experience both as a senior level executive at a number of the nation’s major research universities, including UC Berkeley, the University of Maryland, College Park, University of Arizona, and Virginia Tech, and as a principal investigator on externally funded research projects in the areas of higher education financial management, financial reporting, pension reform and campus safety and security. From 2008-2010 Mr. Hyatt served as the President of the...

Marc Torka

Research associate, Department of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Sydney (Australia) and WZB Berlin Social Science Center

Marc is a sociologist of higher education, science and the profession. His general interest is how, if at all, institutional changes impact on the practice of academic and professional work. His current research project 'International comparison of doctoral training practices' compares practices of doctoral research and supervision in the social sciences and physics within the German chair, Australian lecturer and US graduate school system.

Marc is currently visiting scholar at the Center of Studies in Higher Education (CSHE) at UC Berkeley, research associate at the Department of...

Ding-Jo Currie, Ph.D.

Distinguished Faculty, Higher Education Leadership California State University, Fullerton, Fullerton, California; Former Chancellor, Coast Community College District – Costa Mesa, California

Dr. Ding-Jo H. Currie’s career includes 30-plus years in the California Community College system with eight additional years in the California State University system. Ding-Jo retired in 2011 from Coast Community College District where she served as Chancellor. She also served as President of Coastline Community College prior to her Chancellor role. Currently, Ding-Jo is serving as Distinguished Faculty at CSU Fullerton and devotes herself in full-time leadership development work.

Having served in many key national leadership roles such as, Board Chair of...