First Review of CSSS in Over Two Decades Highlights Strengths and Opportunities
In Winter 2025, the center had its first external review since 2002.
The review committee included outside experts Jennifer Hill (Co-Chair, Department of Applied Statistics, Social Science, and Humanities, New York University), Jeremy Freese (Chair, Department of Sociology, Stanford University) and Murali Haran (Professor, Department of Statistics; Associate Director of the Center for Climate Risk Management, Pennsylvania State University) joined by University of Washington (UW) faculty Rachel Cichowski (Chair, Department of Political Science) and Qing Shen (Chair and Director of the UW Graduate School’s Interdisciplinary PhD Program in Urban Design and Planning).
Thank you to faculty and students across the UW who took the time to meet with the committee during the two-day review!
In their final report, the review committee praised CSSS’s strong contributions to research, training, and collaboration, noting the Center “fosters a vibrant intellectual community that catalyzes collaborative scholarship” with curriculum that “creates exceptional efficiency while significantly enhancing students’ research capabilities.”
The review found that, “for departments that have significant numbers of faculty doing quantitative research... CSSS amplifies this strength into a viable reputational and recruiting tool... For programs that are primarily qualitative in nature... CSSS provides unique training opportunities for students and intellectual nourishment for faculty that would otherwise be unavailable.”
The report also highlighted that, because “the demand for quantitative education, quantitative skills, and research collaborations are higher now than they have been at any point since CSSS was founded… it is important to continue to invest as that investment is greatly multiplied.”
The review committee concluded with recommendations “for bolstering the capacity and efficacy of CSSS as well as strategies for helping to ensure its sustainability in the future,” noting that “in the face of demographic and financial challenges, CSSS would help with the financial viability of providing crucial methodological research education across the university.”
The review’s findings and recommendations — including increased investment in CSSS — are being considered by the College of Arts and Sciences and are guiding our strategy in the years ahead.
Elena Erosheva
CSSS Director
