Following more than 36 years of exemplary, dedicated service to UC San Diego, Executive Director of Institutional Research (IR) Christine Hurley is retiring from UC San Diego at the end of the academic year.
Hurley has been a constant at UC San Diego since 1986, when she joined the campus as a freshman student in Warren College. After graduation, Hurley began working as an administrative assistant for the departments of History, Judaic Studies and Economics, and then transitioned to working for the department chair and in the business office for the Department of Biology, where she learned more about academic personnel and space management and planning.
Hurley’s early work learning about planning and space use at the university led to a job as an analyst, and eventually an assistant director in the Capital Planning Department. During her 15 years in Capital Planning, she worked as principal planner on projects including Library Walk, the Natural Sciences building in Revelle College, the UC San Diego Trolley Station project and the Moores Cancer Center. The experience of working in Capital Planning, accompanied by experiences seeing how data informs decision-making at the university, led to her transition to Institutional Research.
In 2015, Institutional Research moved from Resource Management and Planning, now Operations Management and Capital Programs (OMCP), to Academic Affairs, where Hurley has reimagined what IR can look like on a campus. She has created a unit that has served as a model for other UC campuses. Hurley also led a culture shift to organize data analysts into a community across the university, so that if an analyst within a school or department needed backup, there would be support from IR.
We are grateful for Christine Hurley’s expertise in the Institutional Research space, as well as her leadership on campus and within the UC community. Her impact is undeniable, and she will be greatly missed.
Erin Espaldon, director of student success research and analytics in IR, will serve as Interim Executive Director while a permanent director is identified. Espaldon has worked at UC San Diego for more than 12 years, working in the Division of Graduate Education and Postdoctoral Affairs prior to joining IR nearly 10 years ago. She is responsible for providing the Student Academic Success Profiles for regular use in processes such as program review and program assessment, as well as conducting in-depth analyses on student success and barriers to student success.
Please join me in expressing our deepest appreciation to Christine Hurley for her leadership and commitment to UC San Diego and congratulate Erin Espaldon on her selection as Interim Director.
