The AIR community mourns the loss of Alexander Astin, who was a pioneer of student experience research and theories and professor emeritus at the UCLA School of Education & Information Studies. He passed away May 18 at age 89.

Astin founded the Higher Education Research Institute and the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at UCLA, both of which oversaw “The American Freshman,” an annual survey of college freshmen across the nation which Astin created in 1966.

Read more about his contributions or view a full obituary for Alexander Astin.