IPR - Institute for Policy Research - Northwestern University

MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR
Fay Lomax Cook
It was in October 1968 that Northwestern announced the
establishment of a new center devoted to the study of urban
affairs. At the time, then-vice president and faculty dean Payson
S. Wild wrote, “Our Center for Urban Affairs can make a unique
contribution if we have scholars committed to the application of
scientific research in the realm of public policy.”
This sentence rings as true today, more than 40 years later, as it did in 1968. It also explains to a large degree
why the center, now known as the Institute for Policy Research, still stands as a vibrant and productive locus
of interdisciplinary social science research of the highest order.
Today, the number of faculty members has grown from three to 33. The number of IPR studies has grown
from its first study of racial discrimination to encompass an impressive body of working papers, articles, and
books on many pressing, policy-relevant issues from crime to poverty, inequality, housing, and education.
IPR faculty continue to expand the Institute’s research scope through initiatives on quantitative research
methods for the social sciences, performance measurement in nonprofits, social disparities and health, and
poverty and inequality, among others. The Institute also raised its education policy area to a full research
program in 2008, and it is being led by one of our newest faculty fellows, education economist David Figlio.
Over the year, IPR faculty tackled many policy-relevant questions: How does race affect biotechnology
research? Law professor Dorothy Roberts is developing a four-pronged framework to deal with legal and
political approaches to race consciousness in biotech research. Why, despite more women in the workforce
than ever before, are women leaders still so rare? Psychologist Alice Eagly and her colleague examined why
women’s paths to power remain especially challenging. Could loan-return guarantees help restore market
confidence? Economist Charles F. Manski and his colleague believe so.
IPR faculty also serve as mentors to graduate students, hundreds of whom have passed through IPR over 40
years and have continued on to careers in academia and research, tackling many of the same policy-pertinent
issues they encountered here as students.
Additionally, IPR has served as a major methodological training ground over the past years. In 2008, more
than 150 researchers, academics, and students from around the nation took part in one of four workshops
devoted either to quantitative methods for education research or to biomarkers in large panel studies.
As we celebrate our 40th anniversary, we look back with some satisfaction at the research our faculty has
produced. Yet a number of problems from 1968 are still, unfortunately, present today, demanding our
attention and relevant solutions. Thus, our mission—to produce policy-relevant research of the highest order
and disseminate it as widely as possible—continues.
Fay Lomax Cook, Director
Professor of Human Development and Social Policy
3