Organized by the Social Science Ideas Panel Committee, Daniel Lichter and Valerie Hans, Co-Chairs.

As an elite Land Grant university, Cornell has embraced public engagement and state and community outreach as fundamental missions.   Cornell is home to New York State’s Cooperative Extension Service, which extends basic research to its state-wide constituency, and to Cornell’s Experiment Station, which supports applied public policy research in service to the public, both within the state and across the United States.  The public policy faculty—broadly conceived—provides a bridge between Cornell’s traditional academically-oriented departments and faculty and the public.  Indeed, translational research is on the ascendancy at the National Institutes of Health (i.e., Bench to Bedside).     In this regard, Cornell’s social science faculty from City and Regional Planning, Policy Analysis and Management, Industrial and Labor Relations, Government, and the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research provide new possibilities for synergistic research and training—radical collaboration—across the various social science disciplines.

But public policy and engagement is not limited to interconnections among social science faculty and programs, but also involves programs outside the traditional social science disciplines.  As an example, Cornell is known from its strengths in the environmental sciences, natural resources, and sustainability (e.g., Atkinson Center).  Social scientists are actively involved in research on the behavioral and economic consequences of climate change (e.g., populations displaced by drought, or changes in the suitability or productivity of hybrid seed crops, such as coffee or grapes).  Changes in the digital environment and social media also call for a better understanding of ethics, regulatory policy, and social and political impacts of new forms of communication and social influence (e.g., fake news and propaganda). For example, linkages between the Department of Communications (mostly involving psychologists) and Computer and Information Sciences represent a real strength and opportunity in the social sciences at Cornell.  Other on-going research involves new collaborations between transportation engineering and the decision-making sciences, including psychology, marketing, and regulatory economics (in PAM).    Social scientists are also well-suited to address questions about the adoption and diffusion of new technologies (e.g., driverless cars).

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