Core Service Centers

A key element in the School's mission is a set of "service" centers designed support the teaching and research of constituent academic programs and research centers, provide new opportunities for multidisciplinary research and teaching, and, above all, foster a community of collaboration in scholarly inquiry and policy analysis.

These Core Service Centers will also reach beyond the School and the University to the Greater Boston community, and to the national and international institutions with which Northeastern collaborates. While they are still in the formative stage, a brief description of these core service centers is offered:

Research and Quantitative Methods Center

The Research and Quantitative Methods Core Center will provide a range of services in statistics, quantitative and qualitative research methods, the construction of policy analyses, and design of funded research proposals. The Center will also offer access to and training in an array of data sets and software packages, including geographic information systems (GIS), and will house a survey research center to monitor key trends and attitudes on prominent regional issues, provide survey design and implementation experience for students, and produce needed data for research.

Experiential Education and Career Services Center

The Experiential Education and Career Services Center will build on Northeastern's traditional emphasis on practice by fostering collaboration among social science experiential education programs and by supporting additional opportunities for students, whether through cooperative education, internships, or undergraduate research. This Core Center will also serve the career development needs of the School's students and alumni. Within the School, experiential learning in community settings can exemplify why and how an urban university is deeply connected to the life of the surrounding community, thinking of itself as a neighbor, making its resources and facilities available to community residents.

Urban Research Consortium

The mission of the Urban Research Consortium is to support the work of the research centers throughout the University on a broad assortment of research activities related to public policy in general and urban issues in particular. The Consortium will serve as a mechanism to enhance overall research capacity by facilitating cross-college information exchange, fostering sponsored research, and bringing in policy experts and policy consultants to work with School faculty and students to pursue policy research directed at Greater Boston and the Commonwealth.

Ethics, Values, and Public Policy Center

The Ethics, Values, and Public Policy Core Center will have as its mission the creation and dissemination of knowledge regarding the ethical and value components of public policy. Through research, teaching, collaborative efforts, and public outreach, it will work to make explicit the often hidden value dimensions of policy analysis and evaluation, apply systematic examination to these value dimensions, disseminate both the methods and the results of ethical and value analysis, and promote their use in both private and public institutions.

International and Transnational Core Center

In line with the need to "Think Globally - Act Locally," the International and Transnational Core Center is designed to educate students to live and work in a complex global community, promote "global citizenship" and social responsibility throughout the NU community, and promote teaching, scholarly inquiry, and applied policy research from a global perspective. In particular, this Core Center will create and disperse knowledge on the global, international, and transnational dimensions of major policy questions. The Center will house existing and proposed regional studies centers, as well as a new World Class Cities Initiative designed to foster learning exchanges with cities throughout the world with economic, social, and political profiles similar to Greater Boston.

Greater Boston Community Fellows Program

The Greater Boston Community Fellows Program will permit a small number of local officials, neighborhood leaders, and leaders of non-profit organizations to spend time in residence at the School, where they could attend classes, offer seminars about their own experiences, act as mentors to graduate and undergraduate students, and participate in research projects at any of the research centers within the School. Above all, the Fellows will have the opportunity to step back from their daily work lives to consider how their work fits into a broader context and, at the same time, pick up new skills through class work and participation in research.