Support for Research Centers
We partner with several research centers within UC Santa Cruz’s Social Sciences Division to help advance their impact. Research centers gather interdisciplinary groups of faculty and graduate and undergraduate students to advance understanding and action in specific topical areas. Our work with research centers focuses on helping newer centers get established and providing long-term strategy and operational support for a select group of centers with goals that overlap our own, resulting in key synergies.
The types of support that we provide for research centers are often similar to the research coordination services we offer for individual faculty projects. Institute staff and leaders help research centers build networks and community partnerships, gaining buy-in across campus and beyond. We also help with big-picture goal setting and mapping out how to achieve desired outcomes, including fundraising strategies and support with grant development, award management and implementation, and progress reports. Our staff can also help to ease the administrative burden of center operations and strategize on filling staffing needs. We regularly provide office and meeting space, event and outreach support, and budget and purchasing support for our supported centers too.
The goal of all this work is to free center leadership up to focus their attention on answering key research questions. Institute support often plays an important role in facilitating the success of that process. Research centers interested in forming a new partnership with the Institute can contact Executive Director Ned LeBlond.
Centers we partner with:
Campus + Community
Campus + Community (C+C) is dedicated to academic and community collaborations to co-create knowledge for action at UC Santa Cruz and beyond. From institutional systems change to workshops for faculty, students and community members, our partnership with C+C advances the skills, knowledge, and capacities for the Institute’s community-engaged work to thrive. The Institute has been an important partner and incubator for the center, providing leadership, resources, infrastructure, and administrative support to help with efforts like faculty and student training, the launch of the center’s website, and building cross-departmental collaboration.
Center for Labor and Community
The Center for Labor and Community (CLC) is dedicated to the study of working people, the labor movement, and the challenges of the rapidly-changing economy, especially as they affect low-income communities, immigrant communities, and communities of color on the California Central Coast. Institute staff are embedded in the center and support research coordination, day-to-day operations, and community engagement. Those efforts include the California Workplace Outreach Program, a partnership with the Monterey Bay Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO, on a state grant to educate workers across the Central Coast in sectors like agriculture, hospitality, construction, manufacturing, and retail.
Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas
The Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas brings together Chicanx/Latinx and Latin American studies to promote cross-border research that contributes to an enriched understanding of our interconnected lives and futures. Institute staff have previously supported the center through key phases of its growth, such as the establishment of the Human Rights Investigations Lab for the Americas and the dedication of the center in honor of social justice icon Dolores Huerta. Today, we support events, staffing, and strategic planning from time to time to ensure the continued success of our long-time partner.
Right Livelihood Center at UC Santa Cruz
The Right Livelihood Center at UC Santa Cruz is a partnership between UC Santa Cruz and the Right Livelihood Foundation that links students and faculty with “Alternative Nobel Prize” winners for research and education about proven solutions to the world’s most pressing global problems. The Institute works to support the center’s role as Global Secretariat of the Right Livelihood Campus Network. Together, we are working to create a truly global network, inclusive of the Global South, while offering intergenerational programs and opportunities, like international convenings.
Center for Southeast Asian Coastal Interactions
The Center for Southeast Asian Coastal Interactions (SEACoast) is a cluster of scholars collaborating across history, anthropology, biology, and ecology, bringing an area studies perspective to understand Southeast Asia’s coastal regions, which are among the most biologically and culturally rich in the world. The Institute provides the center with ongoing event and project support across the group’s many collaborators. We have also historically assisted with budgeting and preparing annual reports to the center’s funders.
Center for Analytical Finance
The Center for Analytical Finance (CAFIN) demystifies financial markets and practitioners, identifying and solving problems, empowering consumers in financial decision-making, and showing how to level the playing field, improving access to financial markets and services. The Institute supports the center in coordinating with affiliated scholars around the country and world, collecting and distributing working papers from these scholars, and managing logistics for the center’s key events and gatherings.
