Ronald G. Ehrenberg, the Irving M. Ives Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and Economics at Cornell University, is the Director of CHERI. Prior to the creation of CHERI, he served as Cornell's Vice President for Academic Programs, Planning and Budgeting.
The Institute for Community College Development (ICCD) , a SUNY and Cornell University partnership, provides leadership development programs, consulting services, and applied research grant support for community college CEOs, administrators, faculty and staff.
CHERI was established in the fall of 1998 to provide a vehicle for interdisciplinary research on higher education. Faculty and administrators affiliated with CHERI come from 5 different Cornell colleges and other academic institutions around the world. CHERI's current research interests include the implications of the growing dispersion of wealth across academic institutions, the growing costs and importance of science to universities, the financial challenges facing public higher education, the changing nature of the faculty, governance in academic institutions, improving PhD programs in the humanities and associated social sciences, improving persistence rates in STEM Field majors, and reducing inequality in access to higher education. CHERI is funded by grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Atlantic Philanthropies (USA) Inc., the TIAA-CREF Institute, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.