ASSET Research Group

ASSET (Analytics for Student Success and Equity Transformation) banner

Analytics for Student Success and Equity Transformation (ASSET) is a group of researchers, faculty, staff, and administrators from several colleges, schools, and offices at the University of Michigan investigating questions related to equity and student success. The aim of ASSET is to serve the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor community by providing analysis that informs decisions about policies and practices that impact equitable student success, as well as to highlight issues that warrant attention.

The questions ASSET investigates are of particular interest to the provost, program directors, faculty members, and others in the university community. The investigations use institutional data from the U-M Data Warehouse, including the Learning Analytics Data Architecture (LARC) data set, response data from surveys (e.g., the U-M Asks You (UMAY) survey), and interviews of students.

Sign up for the ASSET newsletter, distributed twice each fall and winter semester. Here is our most recent edition, April 2025.

Send questions or research requests to: [email protected]

ASSET Members

Timothy A. McKay, [email protected]
ASSET Chair
Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Physics, Astronomy, Education, and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education

Wu Xie, [email protected]
Research Area Specialist Intermediate, IR Office of Budget and Planning

Solaire Finkenstaedt-Quinn (she/her), [email protected]
Assessment and Evaluation Specialist, IR Office of Budget and Planning

W. Carson Byrd, [email protected]
Associate Research Scientist, Marsal Family School of Education

John Gonzalez, [email protected]
Director of Rackham Institutional Research, Rackham Graduate School

Becky Matz, [email protected]
Lead Research Scientist, Center for Academic Innovation

Dan Merian (he/him), [email protected]
Director of Enrollment Management Analytics and Data, Office of Enrollment Management

Victoria Osten, [email protected]
Program Evaluation Specialist, College of Engineering

Tracy Ackley (she/her), [email protected]
Associate Director of Institutional Research, Office of Budget and Planning

Heather Rypkema, [email protected]
Head of Learning Analytics and FCI Assistant Director, Center for Research on Learning and Teaching

Janel Sutkus, [email protected]
Director of Student Life Research, Student Life

Jozet Channey (she/her), [email protected]
Research Specialist, Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (ODEI)

ASSET Research

Areas of Current Research

  • Relationships between registration processes and credits first-year students enroll in
  • Equity in course outcomes

Findings from Prior Research

Below is a select list of reports of ASSET research and presentations.