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The Summer Institute on Tenure and Professional Advancement (SITPA) at Duke University is a mentoring and professional socialization initiative that facilitates the successful transition from junior faculty status to tenured associate professor for a broad group of early career faculty. The Institute is open to faculty members in their first or second year in a tenure track position in an accredited U.S. based college or university, who are from underrepresented groups or otherwise support the diversity missions of their institutions. SITPA seeks to help remedy the persistent underrepresentation of various racial and ethnic minority groups on the faculties of U.S. colleges and universities.

Photo by Matt Briney

Understanding the Transforming U.S. South: Perspectives on Race, Culture, Politics, and Society. Over the past half century, the South, always a distinctive and critical crucible of national trends, has undergone dramatic changes in its demographics, economy, politics, public institutions, and its culture. A new economy has emerged in the South, one that will potentially have profound political, cultural, and social consequences for not just the region, but for the nation as a whole. The once solid Democratic South is now much more competitive at the state and local level, while Republicans tend to dominate elections for national office. At the same time, more blacks hold elective office in the states of the former Confederacy than in any other region of the country.

In the South Project, it is by design that our initiative is interdisciplinary. It is intended to forge cross-departmental and cross-school collaborations, generate new research activities, spawn proposals for external funding, and develop innovative undergraduate classes. Our intention is to maximize the potential of being an interdisciplinary team. Thus, for example, we will gather and analyze new quantitative survey data to provide baseline information on issues of, education, health care, employment, income and wealth, political attitudes, demographic changes, and inter-racial relations. Yet at the same time we will dispatch trained oral historians to conduct interviews and seek detailed narratives that will help flesh out and contextualize the aggregate quantitative and qualitative data secured through surveys. We hope to develop a more comprehensive view and understanding of where the South stands today.

 

The Duke Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Gender in the Social Sciences (REGSS) provides a context where scholars interested in examining the constructs of race, ethnicity, and gender from an interdisciplinary perspective can engage each other in dialogue and collaboration. It offers opportunities for scholars researching issues of race, ethnicity, and gender to connect with colleagues in other departments and schools. REGSS provides a context where scholars interested in examining the constructs of race, ethnicity, and gender from an interdisciplinary perspective can engage each other in dialogue and collaboration. It offers opportunities for scholars researching issues of race, ethnicity, and gender to connect with colleagues in other departments and schools. Our questions and our methodologies draw on disciplinary backgrounds that include economics, history, political science, psychology, public policy, and sociology, and we welcome participants from across Duke University.

It is supported through funding by the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation grant for  the Interdisciplinary Research Leaders program, an initiative led by the University of Minnesota. The goal of the program is to nurture leaders who are comfortable working in interdisciplinary teams and skilled at using research to promote policy changes that can affect health.

Duke researchers Donna Biederman, Mina Silberberg, and Emily Carmody received the grant which includes leadership training, opportunities to explore different research methods, and research funds to conduct and apply high-quality, community-engaged, action-oriented health research with the intent to affect policy around social determinants of health. You can read more about the program here.

 

Britt Rusert on Left of Black

The Center for Arts, Digital Culture and Entrepreneurship (CADCE) produces original digital content that integrates interdisciplinary research in the social sciences, humanities, and digital arts with innovative business strategies.

CADCE addresses racial, ethnic and gender concerns by creating digital models for pedagogy, learning, and curriculum development. These models take advantage of traditional and emergent media platforms – from blogs, video and social media – to ultimately develop collaborative, vertically integrated digital technology startups.

 

The Duke Center on Law, Race and Politics (CLRP) is a multidisciplinary initiative created to support research, public engagement, teaching, and activities at the intersection of CLRP’s core focus.