Student Experience and Success

Anne MacLachlan

Senior Research Associate and Visiting Scholars Coordinator, CSHE

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...

Aashish Mehta

Associate Professor, Global Studies, UC Santa Barbara

Aashish Mehta is a development economist who studies globalization and structural change, and how they influence the role of education in labor markets. He also studies the political-economy of public services provision, and the role of education in social stratification. His publications cover many other aspects of development policy, and appear in a wide variety of economics and public policy journals.

Born and raised in India, he trained in economics and energy policy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he completed his PhD in Agricultural and Applied Economics. Prior...

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.

Gregg Thomson

Principal Researcher - SERU Consortium

Gregg Thomson is Principal Researcher, Student Experience in the Research University-Association of American Universities Consortium (SERU-AAU) at the Center for Studies in Higher Education. SERU is the comprehensive undergraduate census survey used by a consortium of 15 Association of American Universities member institutions and by the University of California as the University of California Undergraduate Experience Survey (UCUES). His interests are minority and diversity issues in higher education, the development and use of student surveys, and research on the undergraduate student...

Tongshan Chang

Senior Researcher - SERU Consortium, UCOP

Tongshan Chang is Director of Institutional Research and Academic Planning at the University of California (UC) Office of the President and Consultant of UC Systemwide Academic Senate Committees on the Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS) and Preparatory Education (UCOPE). He is SERU (Student Experience in the Research University) Senior Researcher at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at UC Berkeley, voluntarily assisting the SERU leadership and principal investigators in recruiting Chinese institutions and conducting...

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...

Bryan Edward Penprase

Vice President of Sponsored Research and External Academic Relations, Soka University of America

Bryan Penprase is the Vice President for Sponsored Research and External Academic Relations at Soka University of America, where he develops strategic partnerships and builds collaborations with universities and colleges to advance undergraduate education and research at Soka University. He formerly served as Dean of Faculty for three years at Soka University, where he worked to create new academic programs, and managed the curriculum design, hiring and implementation of a new Concentration in Life Sciences. Bryan also has been actively developing global liberal arts collaborations, most...