The Social Science Research Commons (SSRC) is the culmination of five years of planning to stimulate, coordinate, and sustain social science research on the Bloomington campus. Indiana University, Bloomington is home to a broad population of social scientists, with disciplinary homes across departments within the College and across professional schools. The mission of the Social Science Research C
ommons (SSRC) is to become an intellectual center for social science research on the Bloomington campus, promoting collaboration among these scholars and among existing social science research centers, while also increasing competitiveness for external funding. Although the SSRC is designed to serve the social sciences, scholars in other fields will benefit from its research methods training opportunities and will be welcomed into research collaborations. Instead, its goal is to facilitate innovative research, while also offering technical and collaborative support in the grant development and submission process. Its services and activities are available to all social science researchers on campus, whether faculty or graduate students. The SSRC was funded jointly by the Office of the Provost, the Office of the Vice Provost for Research, the College of Arts and Sciences, and UITS. The collaborative orientation of the SSRC is thus reflected in its origins and in its operations. Specific goals of the SSRC include:
• Promoting collaborative social science research by facilitating the development of faculty working groups and by lowering institutional barriers to collaboration;
• Enhancing the visibility and impact of social science research across campus;
• Providing administrative services that serve as a point of entry to a network of broad institutional support staff for social science research, including grant development;
• Providing state of the art technology, data, training, consultation, and small seed grants to facilitate research synergies and external funding;
• Serving as a clearinghouse for information related to social science research, including services and resources, research seminars, workshops, and graduate education.
