Research Universities

Takuya Kimura

Professor, Ph.D, Kyushu University, Japan
Takuya KIMURA is a Japanese Sociologist of Education. He hold Ph.D in Educational Planning from Tohoku University . He is a professor at Kyushu University and the National Center for University Entrance Examinations. He is also the founder and president of Japan Association of College and University Admissions Profession (JACUAP). He holds M.A. in Educational Philosophy from the Graduate School of Education at the University of Tokyo. He has served as Assistant Professor at Kyoto University, Assistant Professor and Associate Professor at Nagasaki University, Associate Professor...

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...

John Aubrey Douglass

Senior Research Fellow

John Aubrey Douglass is Senior Research Fellow -- 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), Envisioning the Asian...

Richard J. Edelstein

Former 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....

Ellen Switkes

Ellen Switkes is Senior Associate and Co-founder of the “Breakfast with George” mentoring program for higher education executives who are ready to move into senior executive positions. She also is co-founder and Director of CSHE’s Berkeley Institutes on Higher Education (BIHE), targeted to higher education leaders from nations outside the United States. BIHE focused on the essential characteristics of major research universities in the United States, with particular emphasis on the University of California as a case study, and on linking Institute programs with CSHE-based policy research...

Press Release--SERU Multi-Engagement Report

March 18, 2025

SERU report cover

Student Success at Risk: New Study Finds Lasting Post-Pandemic Declines in Student Engagement in American Public Universities —Proposed Federal Funding Cuts Could Slow Recovery

March 18, 2025 – A new study from the University of California, Berkeley, finds that student engagement across key areas of research university experience – academics, research, extracurriculars, civic engagement, and career...

SERU Multi-Engagement Report

Igor Chirikov
John Aubrey Douglass
Gregg Thomson
2025

SERU report cover

The Multi-Engagement Model: Understanding Diverse Pathways to Student Success at Research Universities provides an...

UC Berkeley "Stand Up for Science" Rally

March 11, 2025

"Over a thousand people crowded around UC Berkeley’s Savio Steps in Sproul Plaza on Friday (March 7) to protest ongoing or threatened cuts to federal research funds, part of a day of action organized by research scientists around the country.

Gathering in the warm sun, the crowd, bearing placards and signs in support of scientific research, heard from speakers who excoriated the Trump administration for trying to shut down one of the most productive economic engines of all time.

The event was one of nearly three dozen...

https://news.berkeley.edu/2025/03/10/researchers-and-students-gather-in-sproul-p…

Igor Chirikov

Senior Researcher and SERU Consortium Director

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 Etio 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.

As SERU Consortium Director Igor Chirikov has broad responsibilities for overall SERU Consortium...