CHERP Director’s Note

Welcome to the Collaborative for Higher Education Research and Policy (CHERP) at the University of Utah. This Collaborative is a community and platform intended to advance scholarship, policy, and practice on timely and perennial postsecondary education issues at the local, state, and national levels. Our mission is simple but bold: to generate original research on policies impacting higher education access, affordability, success, and completion and to use evidence to advance more just and equitable postsecondary educational opportunities and outcomes. 

Higher education serves as an anchor of American democracy by preparing an educated and engaged citizenry, ensuring an equitable and just system of postsecondary education, advancing principles of academic freedom and intellectual inquiry, and promoting democratic goals and objectives. As an indispensable social institution in American society, there is a need for more relevant and timely research and scholarship that can be used to shape postsecondary policy and practice. 

CHERP will serve as the only group focused exclusively on postsecondary education research and policy in the State of Utah and at the University of Utah. Our faculty and affiliates are scholars and experts on many of the most critical contemporary postsecondary education issues including college access, college affordability and finance, college completion and attainment, higher education governance and leadership, higher education in prison, LGBTQ+ students and policies, STEM higher education, and transfer and mobility, among others.  

As a collaborative and group focused on the intersection of postsecondary education research and policy, it is my hope and expectation that CHERP’s research and scholarship will inform policy and practice decisions at the local, state, and national levels. Indeed, our research affiliates and graduate students are already engaging in research that informs and transforms policy and practice. 

I invite you to visit the About Us page where you can read our mission and objectives, which will serve as the foundation for CHERP’s work. I also invite you to explore our research, publications, and projects to learn more about our work. Finally, please connect with us by singing up for our Newsletter, emailing us at cherp@utah.edu, or connecting with us on Twitter at @CHERP_UUtah. 

 

Sincerely,

 

Jason Taylor, Ph.D.

CHERP Director & Associate Professor

University of Utah 

 

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