Biography:

Cinnamon is a principal analyst in Institutional Research and Decision Support (IRDS) at the University of California, Merced. As a unit, IRDS integrates, analyzes, and reports on campus data, including official campus statistics like retention and graduation rates. She received a PhD in social psychology from Penn State in 2011 and did post-doctoral fellowships both in teaching and research at Penn State and the University of Washington, respectively. She likes working in an applied educational setting like UC Merced because she can see the results of her work put into action. Her areas of focus at UC Merced are surveys and student success research projects. She has also served on various campus committees and workgroups and is currently a co-chair of the Campus Experience Survey Workgroup – developing a strategic plan for achieving equity goals. She has also represented UC Merced in collaborations with the UC Office of the President and was the President of the California Association for Institutional Research in 2020. As a first-generation college student and a product of higher education herself, she loves coming to work every day because she gets to help the campus use data to achieve its mission of teaching, research, and public service.