The College of Charleston Center for Social Science Research

College Of Charleston, Charleston SC

Investigators

Abstract

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). This project will renovate and expand existing research space in the Bell Building on the campus of the College of Charleston to create a new Center for Social Science Research (CSSR). The new center will be a state-of-the art space designed to facilitate collaborative research and research training in many of the College's research programs in the social sciences, including biological anthropology, archaeology, cultural anthropology, cognitive science, human development, and neuropsychology. The project will relocate several existing, but inadequate, social science research laboratories to the Bell Building to be part of the Center for Social Science Research - in particular, archaeology and biological anthropology laboratories as well as several psychological research labs that are currently located in former private homes throughout the campus. Within the CSSR, the psychological research spaces will include cognitive testing labs, psychology testing labs, data collection rooms, and individual testing rooms. The anthropological research spaces will include a renovated cultural anthropology lab, a relocated archaeology wet lab to be shared with the biological anthropology research program, and a computer lab for data analysis to be shared with the psychology programs. The CSSR will providee an array of opportunities for the faculty and students to collaborate on research questions in the social sciences ranging from the role that the cognitive mechanisms of executive control and automaticity play in decision-making and memory, to the mechanisms involved in relational learning, behavioral fluency, and behavioral history (e.g. resurgence), to the function of stone tools and their relationship in space in reconstructing the principal economic activities in past societies. The Center will improve the quality and capacity of and access to the social science research infrastructure at the College and increase its impact on the nation's social science research enterprise. Undergraduate and graduate students will have additional research training opportunities available to them, including an array of interdisciplinary research projects. Broader participation in social science research by the local and regional communities is expected because the social science research laboratories will be centralized in a building that is accessible to persons with disabilities and adjacent to a large parking garage.