After years of struggling to escape its stigma as a destination for housing exiles, Trent Drive Hall has finally become a promising residence, a real-world research sanctuary in the midst of the ivory tower.
The recently formed Social Sciences Research Institute moved into the former North Campus dormitory in March and has been gathering appropriate programs under its interdisciplinary umbrella since its inception last August. The Institute, which has remained atypically low-profile on campus, is now leading the growing but fledgling social sciences facet of the University-wide trend to cross-fertilize ideas beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries.
"Certainly we're hoping we gain a higher profile as faculty start to look to us as a resource," SSRI Director Alexandra Cooper said.
Housed in former two-person dorm rooms, the Institute offers space for faculty to push each other beyond their comfort zones, as well as administrative support and seminars for cross-departmental collaboration in psychology, political science, public policy, sociology, cultural anthropology and economics. "These things can be provided by departments, but there's arguably an economy of scale effect for providing them at a larger level," Cooper said.
SSRI has used the John Hope Franklin Center, its humanities interdisciplinary equivalent, as a model in some ways, but interdisciplinary collaboration is much more fluid in humanities disciplines, administrators said, and SSRI has new ground to chart.
"Typically when we're creating and approving new interdisciplinary programs, they are still very heavily [weighted] in the biological sciences," Dean of the Graduate School Lewis Siegel said. "This is a spurt like we haven't seen, with all the social sciences."
On any given afternoon, three or four graduate students hang out at the Institute, and as faculty have more time this summer, many affiliated with the center plan to base their work from the relatively remote former residence hall.
Four social science interdisciplinary programs, which are now affiliated with SSRI, have sprung up in the last three years: Empirical Implications of Theoretical Models, American Politics Research Group, MicroIncentives Research Center, and the Program for Advanced Research in the Social Sciences.
So far most of the initiatives have been research-focused, but starting in the fall PARISS, which to this point has existed only as a fellowship for graduate students ready to take pen in hand and write their dissertations, will offer a series of classes and a certificate to any grad student interested in crunching social science numbers.
"We are not out just to find the [students] who are doing the kind of interdisciplinary work that we're interested in, but to give them the training to be able to do the research," Cooper noted.
The shift toward interdisciplinary research is being dictated by real-world issues that form without regard for University-dictated departmental divisions, administrators said. Rebuilding Iraq, for instance, requires political science research about democracy, sociological information about Arab culture and religion and economic solutions to current challenges.
"Many of the problems that are most pressing now do not fit into the traditional boundaries," said John Aldrich, one of PARISS' directors and a professor of political science. "The problems that hit front pages of serious newspapers and magazines don't lend themselves to being solved within a single discipline."
The way universities are structured, finding grant money and institutional support for interdisciplinary collaborations can be difficult. "Right now all the attraction is to stay in your department," said Michael Munger, professor of political science and outgoing director of MIRC. "What the SSRI is trying to do is create a place that's exciting and interesting where people will hang out more."
And since office space is usually allocated by department, it is possible that researchers from different departments might never meet. "Even on a single campus, people interested in common problems aren't necessarily aware of people working on the same topics," Cooper said.
Trent is not a long-term location for the institute, but at the moment it is the best option, Executive Vice President Tallman Trask said. A permanent plan for SSRI's physical space will likely come in the next several years--space in the renovated Erwin Square Mill or on Central Campus has been discussed.
A social psychology initiative involving Arts and Sciences, the School of Law and the Nicholas School of the Environment hopes for laboratory space near SSRI, but the limited space in Trent does not allow such a move.
But for now, a slew of bedrooms-cum-offices is suitable for most of the Institute's needs.
"We're not in it for the glamour," Aldrich said. "We're in it for being able to meet and interact together."
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