Student Experience and Success

John Aubrey Douglass

Senior Research Fellow, CSHE

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...

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...

Gary Matkin

Former Dean of Continuing Education, University of California, Irvine
Former Dean, Continuing Education, Distance Learning, and Summer Session Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1989, Education M.B.A., University of California, Berkeley, 1970, Political Aspects of Business B.S., University of San Francisco, 1966, Accounting Certified Public Accountant (inactive), 1966, California License E14426 Other Experience Associate Dean, CE, UC Berkeley 1990-2000 Director, Admin Services, UC Berkeley 1975-1990 Business Officer, UC Berkeley 1973-1975 CPA, Various 1966-1973 Download Gary W....

George Blumenthal

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:

The number...

Aray Saniyazova

SERU-International Research Associate

Aray Saniyazova is a SERU-International Research Associate. She holds a Master’s degree in education from Vanderbilt University (2011), and PhD in education from Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan (2017).

Her research interests focus on contemporary issues of higher education: transition from high school to university; student experience and college climate; gender issues in education; institutional development of newly established universities. She was involved in the collaborative research project of the Nazarbayev University Graduate School of Education and the University of...

Karin Fischer

Research Associate

Karin Fischer is a journalist who focuses on higher education. Her primary area of focus is international education, including American colleges' activities overseas, study abroad, the globalization of the college experience, and international-student recruitment. Her work with the Center for Studies in Higher Education will focus on the international student experience, including issues of acculturation, social satisfaction, and academic performance. She is the author of a weekly newsletter, ...

Rahul Choudaha

Senior Researcher - SERU Consortium

Dr. Rahul Choudaha is a Senior Researcher affiliated with the SERU Consortium. As a scholar-practitioner, Choudaha’s applied research focuses on mobility, experiences and enrollment of international students and its implications for internationalization and global engagement strategies. He has worked for nearly 15 years in global education services organizations and held cross-functional leadership roles including Executive Vice President at Studyportals and Chief Knowledge Officer at World Education Services. Choudaha...

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....

Krista M. Soria

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...

Steven G. Brint

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) (...