The Center Steering Committee is currently undertaking a survey of the faculty to assist in its planning activities. Among the functions and activities about which it is seeking counsel are:
Annual Theme: Linking the interests of people in several departments. The theme would provide important opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration. There would be an explicit effort to link the theme to course offerings and, at times, one interdepartmental course would be explicitly linked to the theme. While the theme would be a major focus of the Center's activities during the year, there would still be a good deal of room for other topics.
Speaker Series: Invited speakers would address topics of interest to faculty and students in the social sciences as a whole. Often speakers would address questions central to the annual theme. for example, if poverty were the theme, each department might propose a speaker who represents a particular disciplinary viewpoint so that over the course of a year, each department would be exposed to the assumptions, methods, and theories of the other social sciences.
Film Series: Perhaps linked to the same theme, a bi-monthly film series for students and faculty would create the basis for many cross-disciplinary conversations.
Small Conferences: At the initiative of individual or a group of faculty members, small conferences, perhaps linked to courses and to the annual theme, could be funded. These conferences could be tied to specific social issues in the larger Philadelphia region.
Periodic Public Seminars: An important goal for the Center will be organizing periodic public seminars or discussions around breaking events of widespread interest to the campus. The goal would be to provide a forum for the presentation and discussion of social science perspectives on the questions and a forum where members of the community can consider them in a thoughtful way.
Informal Lunch Presentations: These would inform Center participants about the research of their colleagues. The Steering Committee expects this program to be particularly useful for new faculty and visitors. In addition, however, lunches might be used for meetings with campus speakers, regular meetings during a presidential campaign or discussion of ongoing policy proposals.