Social Sciences

Founded in 1979 as an independent academic division, the School of Social Sciences has the task of helping us understand the relationships among individuals, groups, and nonhuman elements in the social, political, and economic environment.

Increasingly, we must look specifically at the interactions between people and technological issues ranging from digitization to healthcare. It also is the job of the social sciences to give all our students—not just the 20 percent who major in the social sciences—a cohesive overview of these many relationships and interactions and guide them in developing critical intellectual capacities.

Despite its youth, the School of Social Sciences has become a prestigious center of research in social and economic theory. Although fewer in number than those at our peer institutions, faculty in the school’s five departments—anthropology, economics, political science, psychology, and sociology—and ancillary programs—cognitive sciences, policy studies, and managerial studies—have had an outsized impact on their fields. Almost daily, the media, policy-makers, businesses, and other organizations contact our faculty members for insight and expertise on issues such as local and national politics, the Middle East, ethnic conflicts in emerging democracies, race relations, taxation policy, preservation of antiquities in Western Africa, neuroscience, and cognitive psychology, among others.