Best wishes for an early spring.
Karen Cook
IRiSS Director and Ray Lyman Wilbur Professor and Chair of Sociology

To get the ball rolling with our first edition, here's some news which may be of interest:

Gotlib and Cook Announce Awards Reception for Social Science Faculty
Senior Associate Dean Ian Gotlib and IRiSS Director Karen Cook invite your for the first annual awards reception for the social science faculty this fall. Invitations will be sent out later this month. We look forward to celebrating recently published books and journal articles, new grants, honorary degrees and awards received, and other achievements.

Grusky Invites Faculty for Inequality Network (tomorrow afternoon)
This fall IRiSS announced the opening of the Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality. Sociology Professor David Grusky, who directs the center, invites faculty with an interest in issues of inequality to attend an opening reception this Thursday, April 13 at 3:30 pm. Location is the lobby of the Hewlett Teaching Center. Questions and RSVPs to afrooz@stanford.edu

Snipp Explores Census and NCHS Center Opening on Campus
Sociology Professor Matt Snipp has begun conversations with the Berkeley Regional Census Center, the U.S. Census Bureau, and the National Center for Health Statistics about opening a regional microdata center on campus with IRiSS support. Having such a center will allow Stanford scholars convenient access to highly confidential federal data that permit innovative analyses of contemporary life. The next step for this project is assessing the level of interest among faculty. If interested, send email to: snipp@stanford.edu

MAPSS/IRiSS Colloquium Series Kicks Off; Steve Barley Up Next
The Methods of Analysis Program for the Social Sciences, a program of IRiSS, initiated a colloquium series on March 2, offering lunchtime presentations from world-class methodologists. The talks are intended for faculty and graduate students across the social sciences. The speaker for April 18 is Stanford Professor Steve Barley from Management Science and Engineering, talking about "Ethnography." The full list of speakers can be found at: http://www.stanford.edu/group/mapss/colloquium/index.html

Abraham Tests New Survey Software for Conducting Surveys via the Internet
The IRiSS web site now has a page describing our pilot program for authoring and deploying surveys. The two software packages currently available are open-source and provide basic survey functionality including multi-page surveys and conditional branching. Send email to the Academic Technology Specialist at IRiSS, Vijoy Abraham, vijoy@stanford.edu, if you'd like to learn more. Or go to: http://www.stanford.edu/group/iriss/resources/survey

IRiSS Provides Seed Grants to Encourage Growth of Grant Proposals
In it's first year of operation, IRiSS has already been helped raise over $4 million of grant work.
Providing seed grants at times, and staff support for proposal development, IRiSS aims to encourage faculty to write and submit grants proposals to external sources. For additional information about grant development and support, contact Chris Thomsen: cthomsen@stanford.edu

IRiSS Moves Into Wallenberg
At last IRiSS has a home--at least temporarily. Later this month the Institute will move into temporary research space on the 4th floor of Wallenberg Hall. We hope to be joined there by Laura Carstensen's new Stanford Center for Longevity. We invite you to visit.

Kudos
* Thanks to Brad Efron and Simon Jackman for their impressive talks to kick off the MAPSS Colloquium Series this year.

* The soon to be published H&S Annual Reports touts an impressive list of awards and achievements, recognizing Professors Aoki, Arrow, Bandura, Bobo, Bower, Brady, Grief, Grill-Spector, Hodder, Jain, Lepper, Levin, Moe, Quill, Ridgeway and many others. The report will be posted to the H&S School website in coming weeks. The paper version should be accessible at the Dean's Office soon. Kudos to Lisa Kwiatkowski who took editorial leadership for the report.

In closing, I encourage you to send news about you and your graduate and undergraduate students that we can publish in upcoming issues of this newsletter. We aim to create an effective news source for the Stanford social science research community.

Chris

--
Chris Thomsen
Executive Director
Institute for Research in the Social Sciences
Wallenberg Hall, Bldg. 160
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-2055
(650) 799-8843

http://iriss.stanford.edu