Letter from the Director | Spring 2008
Reflecting on ISERP
This is the last newsletter that I will write as Director of ISERP. I have always believed that one of the most difficult things to establish is a culture that values collective goods. ISERP was conceived to be a collective goods organization, and since our inception eight years ago, we have tried to act consistently with that vision.
The scale of our operations has increased dramatically since ISERP was founded in 2000. From one grant of $200,000, we have grown to support an annual research portfolio of over $10,000,000. We used to have one staff member. Now we have dozens. Many of our component centers have blossomed and become self-sufficient, and we support a wide array of projects and other collaborative ventures. The core public functions of ISERP-our workshops and seminars, our publications (this newsletter, for example)-have also expanded significantly. All of this activity has been designed to enhance the social sciences at Columbia, and for those of us old enough to remember what was not here in 2000, there is much to be pleased with what is here now. At the start, Bob Shapiro helped nurture many of the important changes. He was always a strong voice for collective goods, for using ISERP to improve the social science community. And so it is with great pleasure that I use this letter to announce that he has agreed to serve as Director of ISERP next year. With Bob Shapiro, the social science community at Columbia has a leader who will not allow ISERP to become a private good. He brings fresh vision, fresh process, and a commitment to excellence in everything he does, and we are all very fortunate that he has agreed to lead the institute.
The success of ISERP has rested heavily on the contributions of quite unusually dedicated staff. Some of our most talented staff members will also be leaving shortly. Grace Hong (who imagined, invented, and actually made these newsletters) is leaving as our Public Affairs Manager. ISERP's public face-the content on our website, the policy briefs that will be forthcoming, the newsletters, our annual report, our cool graphic footprints, and the frequent stories about ISERP researchers and affiliated faculty in the news-all arose from her vision and effort. Likewise, Kristin Murphy, who has been here almost from the beginning, and who runs our grant office, is also leaving. Kristin is the matchmaker who links dozens of investigators to funders such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and private foundations. Our success in getting external funds has rested heavily on her skilled management of proposals, budgets, and the Internal Review Board (IRB) process. Countless investigators-young and old-have had their proposals improve under her watch. Kristin will be going on to a PhD program in Sociology (she has many choices, so we do not know where yet); Grace will be moving on to D.E. Shaw to assume a leadership position in their human relations operation. The new staff who will replace them will share their same commitments to excellence.
I have had a great time working at ISERP and helping to build what I hope will become recognized as the Bureau of Applied Social Research (BASR) of the 21st century-an organization that innovates, supports a wide variety of work, is not hampered by narrow intellectual orthodoxy, and sees beyond the frames of disciplines to build a truly interdisciplinary social science. This has meant new collaborations with the Mailman School of Public Health, the Law School, the School of Social Work, the Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWAG), the regional institutes, and numerous other communities in which the social sciences are embedded. Some of these collaborations will surely fail, and in the long run, we should be pleased by that fact, for an organization such as ours to always create ideas and objects that succeed is by definition too conservative.
Peter Bearman, Director
Institute of Social and Economic
Research and Policy
