Social Science Summer Program at Columbia is Open for Enrollment to Chinese High School Students

Columbia University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics will return again to China this summer with the Social Science Summer Program at Columbia, in partnership with Columbia Global Centers | Beijing and Teenager Innovation and Challenge Projects. Launched a year ago, this summer program is designed for highly motivated Chinese high school students. The first cohort of participants in 2014 includes the students from Beijing National Day School, Shanghai Foreign Language School, Nanjing Language School, Shenzhen Middle School, etc.

February 12, 2015

Columbia University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics will return again to China this summer with the Social Science Summer Program at Columbia, in partnership with Columbia Global Centers | Beijing and Teenager Innovation and Challenge Projects. Launched a year ago, this summer program is designed for highly motivated Chinese high school students. The first cohort of participants in 2014 includes the students from Beijing National Day School, Shanghai Foreign Language School, Nanjing Language School, Shenzhen Middle School, etc.

The Social Sciences Summer at Columbia University provides students with an understanding of the principles and skills to design and conduct social research. It encourages students to critically evaluate the methods, strategies and data used by social scientists and provides training in analyzing a range of qualitative and quantitative methods. The program is structured for highly motivated students with interest in the social sciences and the research process. Students will work closely with faculty in daily seminars. The two and a half-week program culminates with a series of presentations of group research proposals, in which students will collaborate with each other and Columbia University faculty and staff to lay the groundwork for a larger research project.

This year's summer program will take place from July 13 to July 28 (Group A) and July 30 to August 14, 2015 (Group B), with a maximum of 16 student in each group. Interested student can contact Program Coordinator Jason Yu by email [email protected] or phone 010-56497430 for more information about program and application.

FEATURES

  • 13 days of instruction by Columbia University faculty and staff that introduces students to essential social science research techniques.

  • An interactive, collaborative research project and various in-session programming activities, such as public lectures and a conceptual scavenger hunt where students travel throughout New York’s neighborhoods to collect data.

  • Two-and-a-half-week stay in University housing in the dynamic Morningside Heights neighborhood of New York City, itself a laboratory for social science research.

  • Access to research facilities at the Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theory and Empirics and the libraries of Columbia University.

  • Various activities to introduce students to Columbia University and the United States university system in general, including a Question and Answer session with admissions counsellors and tours of the campus and main library.

    OUTCOMES
    By the completion of this program, students will:

  • Understand a diverse set of theories and methods that underpin social science research.

  • Comprehend the comparative strengths and weaknesses of several research methods.

  • Evaluate, analyze and interpret qualitative data and apply this understanding to a given research problem.

  • Identify statistical methods for basic analysis of quantitative data and apply those to a given research problem.

  • Collaboratively prepare a research proposal—including an abstract, literature review, design, and discussion—drawing on knowledge of various research methods.

  • Produce and present a summary of a proposed research project to a group of colleagues and Columbia University faculty.

    FACULTY

    Peter Bearman, Ph.D., Sociology
    Peter Bearman is the director of INCITE, the Cole Professor of Social Science, and co-director of the Health & Society Scholars Program. He was the founding director of ISERP, serving from the Institute’s launch in 2000 until 2008. A recipient of the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award in 2007, Bearman is currently investigating the social determinants of the autism epidemic.

    Mary Marshall Clark, Oral History
    In addition to being the director of the Columbia Center for Oral History Research located in INCITE, Mary Marshall Clark is co-founder and director of Columbia’s Oral History Master of Arts degree program, created in 2008-09. Formerly she was an oral historian and filmmaker at the New York Times. She has been involved in the oral history movement since 1991, and was president of the United States Oral History Association from 2001-2002, and has served on the executive council of the International Oral History Association.

    William McAllister, Ph.D., Political Science
    William McAllister, Columbia University, is director of the Mellon Interdisciplinary Gradate Fellows Program and a senior research fellow at INCITE. McAllister’s recent research uses methods of trajectory analysis to study the lives of homeless people and the effects of policies and programs on their lives. He is also analyzing the relationship between experimentally designed research and policymaking and program design and carrying out a long-term study on transformations in the recruitment structure of the U.S. state.

    Adam Reich, Ph.D., Sociology
    Adam Reich received his PhD from UC Berkeley in 2012 and is a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar at Columbia University. He is the author of two books: Hidden Truth: Young Men Navigating Lives In and Out of Juvenile Prison (University of California Press, 2010), explores how poor young men make sense of their social and economic exclusion, and how they interact with a juvenile justice system that increasingly has lost any pretense of rehabilitation.

    Kristin Murphy, Ph.D. Candidate, Columbia University
    Kristin Murphy is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at Columbia University. Her interests include qualitative methods, communities and urban sociology, the history and current state and practices of carceral institutions. Kristin’s current project is a study of interpersonal and intergroup interactions in dynamic cultural and commercial spaces, specifically New York City’s funeral homes.