Irina Chukhray

I began my career in education research in 2011 at the Houston Education Research Consortium (HERC) at Rice University, starting as a volunteer and later working as a student assistant while pursuing my master's in sociology. After completing my master's, I was hired as a research analyst and continued with HERC for quite a few years. What drew me to this work was the focus on impact - I had an early frustration as a master's student where I would complete research and wonder, 'now what?' At HERC, under the leadership of Dr. Ruth Lopez Turley, I learned how research could directly serve the needs of the Houston Independent School District. Instead of the traditional academic publishing route that takes months or years, we would present our findings immediately to school district leaders who would use that information to make real decisions. For example, I was part of a team that analyzed a multi-million dollar program meant to increase student academic performance, and when we found no difference, the district decided to let go of that program and invest those millions elsewhere. This experience showed me that you don't have to do just publications - the impact part doesn't have to be vague. I need to see something done that helps the lives of students and anyone else involved in that work. When I was on the job market, I specifically looked for roles in institutional research (IR) after learning about it through informational interviews at UC Berkeley. I discovered that IR is the research I had been doing, but tied to one specific institution where everything directly impacts students, staff, and faculty. For 1.5 years now, I've been the Assistant Director of Institutional Research at San Francisco Bay University, where I built the Office of IR from scratch. I created a data request system and website portal so staff no longer have to rely on emails. My team and I respond to urgent requests from our VP and president, sometimes needing answers by end of day, conduct compliance reporting like IPEDS, and lead data walkthroughs with faculty and administrators. Every day is exciting because there's always something happening - colleagues from my PhD program ask if I'm tired of my job yet, but that question doesn't apply to me because I love what I do. My proudest moment ties back to impact: my dissertation work on immigrant youth (the 1.5 generation) who came to the U.S. between a few months and under 18. As someone originally from Ukraine who came to the U.S. at age 9, I understand how immigrant families' understanding of the college application process often doesn't match how it actually works here. After completing this research at UC Davis, I shared it with colleagues at UC Berkeley and San Diego State University, and those individuals took that research and shared it with their counseling and advising centers to increase the effectiveness of how they advise students during outreach. That's very exciting to me because I learned a lot in my own process of figuring out how to go to college, and I wanted to make sure other 1.5 gen students benefit from this work.