Cheryl D. Ching, PhD, is an independent researcher and consultant based in Manila, Philippines. Since 2012, she has studied, taught about, and facilitated initiatives that aim to make racial equity an indelible feature of higher education, focusing in particular on American colleges and universities. Using qualitative methods (as a researcher) and equity-minded inquiry methods (as an instructor and facilitator), Cheryl has sought to understand how people, policies, and structures enact racially unequal practices, and what it takes to make higher education more racially just. Most recently, she was an assistant professor of higher education at the University of Massachusetts Boston where she had the privilege of teaching and learning with racial and social justice-committed scholar-practitioners (2018-2024). She was a co-PI on the Bensimon & Associates team that created the report and toolkit for Whiteness Rules: Racial Exclusion in Becoming an American College President (2021-2022), as well as a co-PI for a research-practice partnership between the Los Angeles Community College District and the University of Southern California focused on the implementation of California Assembly Bill 705 (2020-2023).
Her scholarship has appeared in the American Educational Research Journal, Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, Education Policy, and Review of Higher Education, and has been supported by the Spencer, College Futures, Bill and Melinda Gates, and National Science Foundations. She has facilitated professional learning initiatives for math and English faculty at public higher education institutions in Massachusetts that seek to center racial equity in their practice. Prior to her tenure in academia, she worked on the program staff of The Teagle Foundation, where she managed a college access program for students who attended the New York City Public Schools.
Cheryl earned her PhD in urban education policy at the University of Southern California and was awarded the dissertation of the year award from the Association for the Study of Higher Education in 2017 for her dissertation, Constructing and Enacting Equity in a Community College. She also holds a MA in humanities and social thought from New York University and BA in English literature from Wellesley College.
