She has served as the principal investigator of three major, national studies of institutional effectiveness, equity, and student outcomes, and of the California Benchmarking Project. The results of these studies, which focused on transfer access, basic skills education, pathways for Latinas and Latinos to STEM degrees, and assessment, have been published in numerous journals including the Review of Educational Research, the Harvard Educational Review, the Journal of Higher Education, the Review of Higher Education, Research in Higher Education, and Teacher's College Record.