New research, new partnerships
In 2024, UC San Diego’s Yankelovich Center for Social Science Research is grateful for the opportunity to award over $275,000 in grants to support research by faculty and graduate students all across the School of Social Sciences. Funding went toward three distinct grant programs:
1. Faculty Research Pilot Grants to help develop major research programs aimed at pressing social problems in the United States
2. Partnership-Building Grants to build sustained and engaged partnerships between researchers and practitioners
3. Graduate Research Grants that provided $3,500 each to students who have advanced to candidacy to advance their research agendas
The Center has built on its reputation as a driver of innovative ideas that can be translated into tangible solutions for a diverse San Diego and nation.
— Zoltan Hajnal and Thad Kousser, Co-Directors
2024 Faculty Research Grants
“Developing Best Practices for Violence Risk Assessments in Youth: Implications for Clinical Practice, Decision-making, and Public Policy” -- Bonnie Kaiser (Anthropology), Aaron D. Besterman, MD (Psychiatry), Dov Fox (University of San Diego School of Law)
Mass shootings by American youth are tragically familiar and often follow missed opportunities for intervention. Youth who make violent threats are typically brought to the hospital for psychiatric evaluations. Clinicians then decide whether they should go home, be hospitalized, or be transferred to a correctional setting. This research will examine current practices that emergency department psychiatrists use for assessing risk of violence among youth in order to develop best-practice guidelines for clinicians. The research will be guided by bioethics principles of promoting welfare of patients and fairness in resource allocation, while reducing undue harm, institutional bias, and systemic discrimination.
“Developing Best Practices for AI Use in Education” -- Gail Heyman (Psychology), Amy Eguchi (Education), David Danks (Data Science and Philosophy), Tal Walzer (Psychology)
This project will investigate generative AI within educational settings, aiming to understand its present impact and to formulate responsible integration strategies for classroom use. It will be grounded in learning science principles and will incorporate insights from a range of perspectives, including those of students, educators, and AI specialists. The emphasis will be on creating AI-integrated lessons to enhance understanding and knowledge retention among students in under-resourced high schools.
“Research-Practice Partnership on Increasing College STEM Instructors’ Equitable Teaching Competencies and Student Success” -- Andrew Estrada Phuong (Education Studies), Carolyn Hofstetter (Education Studies), Fan Huang (Biological Sciences), Judy Nguyen, Erilynn Heinrichsen (Teaching and Learning Commons), Stanley Lo (Biological Sciences)
We will leverage research-practice partnerships at UC San Diego (UCSD) to scale equitable and anti-racist pedagogies. Based on randomized controlled trials at UC Berkeley, we developed a STEM pedagogy-course intervention that significantly enhanced 129 instructors’ equitable teaching competencies and their students' achievement. With grant funding at UCSD, we plan to expand and refine this professional development model, grounded in adaptive equity-oriented pedagogy (AEP), which has significantly increased learner engagement, success, sense of community, and belonging.
