The Developmental Infrastructure Core, co-chaired by Jennifer Hirsch and Jane Waldfogel, is charged with facilitating innovative interdisciplinary population research and supporting the professional development of junior faculty. It is responsible for six coordinated sets of activities—those of the four large signature research area groups and small working groups, as well as a seed grant program, workshops, a seminar series, and a junior scholar mentoring program.
Signature Research Area Groups
With the assistance of the Administrative Core staff, the Developmental Core coordinates activities for each of the signature research area groups: Children, Youth, and Families; HIV/AIDS and Reproductive Health; Immigration/Migration; and Urbanism. In addition, the Developmental Core has developed a reporting system so it can oversee each group’s collaborative progress and outcomes.
Small Working Groups
For researchers organized around a specific topic, the Developmental Core not only provides the administrative support available to the larger signature research area groups, but it also convenes internal proposal reviews, assists with formatting proposals and manuscripts (including bibliographic support from the Administrative Core using an Endnote file common to all CPRC), and connects investigators with appropriate resources in the Methodology and Computing, Data, and Information Cores. Working groups may also apply for seed grants to support more extensive preliminary research.
Seed Grant Program
The Developmental Core’s seed grant program is designed to galvanize population research at Columbia by providing strategic support for the ideas most likely to bear fruit in the form of fundable, highly significant research proposals and publications likely to have a major impact on their field. The Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP) has committed $30,000 annually for six years of seed grant funding.
Priority is given to applications which 1) have been developed through the working groups; 2) include investigators from at least 2 units from around campus (so that they build cross-campus and cross-disciplinary collaborations); 3) represent the mentorship of a junior investigator by a more senior one, and 4) are likely to result in an application for funding to NIH, NSF, or a major foundation.
To see the Developmental Core’s request for proposals, click here.
Workshops
Workshops bring together researchers from around the campus and across the city, providing an informal yet in-depth opportunity for researchers to get to know each other and explore the complementarities in their work. Each workshop varies in length from half a day to two days, and provides either hands-on training in specific research methods or an opportunity to present work-in-progress or completed work for critique. Priority is given to workshop topics that 1) build research capacity through cutting-edge methodological training; 2) provide a venue for critical reflection about existing research; and 3) promote new collaborative relationships. To learn about CPRC’s upcoming workshops, go to the Events page.
Seminars
At Columbia, as at many other universities, the seminar calendar offers an overwhelming number of formal presentations of population research. The Developmental Core makes strategic use of communications technology to enable CPRC researchers to learn about and attend a wider range of these existing seminars. Each month, the Developmental Core creates a seminar list that centralizes relevant seminar events at all CPRC-affiliated departments and centers. This seminar listing is disseminated through the CPRC listserv and is also available here.
In addition, CPRC sponsors videoconferences of the Department of Sociomedical Science’s Gender, Sexuality, and Health Seminar Series and co-sponsors the Family Demography and Public Policy Center’s seminar series.
Junior Faculty Mentoring Program
In addition to the above activities, which support all CPRC researchers, the Developmental Core targets two services specifically to junior faculty. First, CPRC’s co-directors are available to meet with affiliated junior faculty at least once a year to review their progress and ensure they are receiving opportunities to collaborate with senior CPRC faculty. Second, the chairs of the Developmental Core organize ad hoc proposal reviews for junior faculty.