Projects

The Center works primarily through projects in different institutional settings, such as higher education, low-wage work, criminal justice, and housing.  Each of the projects brings together creative and committed researchers, practitioners, and students to address problems involving structural inequality, and to do so through examining innovation. The projects conduct interdisciplinary studies, develop research/practice networks, and communicate their learning through publications, websites, educational programs, workshops and conferences. 

Click here for more information on our current projects

Research

The Center’s inquiry approach proceeds through relevant reflection, strategic analysis, empirical and field research, and brainstorming with researchers, students, and innovative practitioners.  The Center’s emphasis is on understanding and enabling effective institutional and social change – how to connect knowledge to action.  Its research operates at a middle level of inquiry to develop usable knowledge about effective approaches for producing sustainable and systemic change.

Click here for more information about current field research projects.

Workshops

The Center offers workshops aimed at developing the capacity and tools available to projects and their collaborators for connecting knowledge and action.  These workshops are designed to develop the capacity to generate reliable and usable knowledge about institutional  change. Methodological workshops offer skills development and training for researchers  and students.  Collaborative workshops bring together researchers from different disciplines and practitioners to brainstorm about projects at relatively early stages of their development.  

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Educational Programs

The Center connects research, teaching, and reflective practice, to create a learning continuum.  It has begun this integrative work through experimental seminars, such as the Diversity and Innovation Field Research Seminar and Practicum, which is a year-long, intensive, multi-disciplinary field research seminar.  This seminar provides a springboard for advancing a more long term goal of developing effective educational and training programs for students and practitioners of institutional change.

Click here for more information on educational programs.