The CSU Social Science Research and Instructional Center
The California State University Social Science Research and Instructional Center provides:
- Support for CSU student, faculty, and staff users of subscription data bases from the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), the Field Poll, and the Roper Center, as well as of unrestricted data bases.
- Workshops on use of these data, as well as on SPSS, SDA, GIS, and other topics as needed. Provided at no cost to CSU campuses. Other institutions: please contact us for more information.
- The annual SSRIC Social Science Student Symposium (S4). Open to undergraduate and graduate students at CSU and to students at community colleges.
- Research and training opportunities through the Field Poll Faculty Fellowship and the ICPSR Summer Training Program.
- Value-added teaching resources, including modules, exercises, and online textbooks. Most of these materials are freely available.
Governance
Overseeing the Center is the Social Science Research and Instructional Council. Founded in 1972, the Council is the oldest of the disciplinary councils in the California State University system. With representatives from each of the CSU campuses, the Council is dedicated to assisting students and faculty in their learning, teaching, and research by:
- providing a forum for sharing information about social science data and computer products;
- initiating and conducting training programs;
- recommending computerized social science projects in the CSU curriculum;
- encouraging the collection and distribution of social science data and computer-related instructional and research materials; and
- advising CSU administrators on policies related to providing quantitative social science data for research and instruction.
Archives
The PDF documents linked here may be of interest in understanding the Council's history. Because of difficulties in scanning, or in converting formats (e.g, from HTML to PDF), portions of some documents have been manually reconstructed. In these cases, there may have been some formatting changes but, except for correction of typographical and other minor errors, every effort has been made to preserve the original content.
Histories
There have been three histories of the Council written at one time or another:
- in the mid 1970s by Richard Mendes (CSU Stanislaus);
- in late 2005 or early 2006 by Elizabeth Nelson (CSU Fresno);
- in 2012 (last revised, 2017) by John Korey (CSPU Pomona). This version also provides links to other documents important to the Council's story (and listed under "Various Documents," below).
Other Council Records
- Minutes of Council Meetings
- Annual Reports
- Five Year Strategic Plan (2016-2021)
- Bylaws, past and current
- Past Council Chairs and Campus Representatives
- SSRIC Budgets
- Social Science Student Symposium
- Field Fellows
- Various Documents
Last Updated: June 23, 2017
