Training Program in Politics, Economics, and Psychology

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The IGERT program in Politics, Economics, and Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley endows students with innovative skills from the social sciences for tackling issues relating key public policy problems, by integrating and thus advancing the social sciences,. The program includes twenty faculty members from economics, political science, psychology, and public policy with strong disciplinary reputations, substantial policy interests, and significant commitments to interdisciplinary and public policy research through their connections with Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy which is coordinating the program. This IGERT program is organized around graduate student education and research on three cross-cutting social science and public policy problems: (1) Encouraging the optimal level of participation in the economy, political system, public programs, and voluntary organizations, (2) Evaluating the effects, costs, and benefits of policies, and (3) Implementing legislation consistent with original legislative intent. The intellectual merit of the program consists of developing integrative interdisciplinary courses and providing trainees opportunities for new research on (1) Understanding and modeling human behavior by combining perspectives from economics, psychology, and political science, (2) Determining causal impacts using quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods from across the social sciences, and (3) Organizational design and politics employing approaches from all the social sciences. Trainee research will be designed to advance the social sciences by considering important public policy problems and by engaging in rigorous modeling and statistical testing. Trainees will be supported through specific coursework, a weekly workshop, home discipline training, and access to innovative laboratories, data centers, and data collection organizations on the Berkeley campus. Broader impacts of this project include finding ways to increase citizens' participation in all aspects of the nation's life as well as improving the basis upon which public policy is made. IGERT is an NSF-wide program intended to meet the challenges of educating U.S. Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the interdisciplinary background, deep knowledge in a chosen discipline, and the technical, professional, and personal skills needed for the career demands of the future. The program is intended to catalyze a cultural change in graduate education by establishing innovative new models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries.