Departments, Programs and Centers
Centers
The Indiana University Center for Bioethics was established on the campus of Indiana University- Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) in July 2001. The Center was initially created with funding from the Indiana Genomics Initiative (INGEN), which was established by a grant from the Lilly Endowment Inc. to the IU School of Medicine. In-kind support is provided by the School of Liberal Arts and the School of Law. The Center's mission is to provide leadership to advance the academic and public understanding of bioethics; to inform the development of social and public policy in health, research, and related fields; and to provide support for the provision of ethics services at Indiana University hospitals. The Center will fulfill its mission through research, education, and service as a university-wide entity.
The Center for Economic Education
The Center's goal is to have all Indiana schools meet or exceed the Voluntary National Content Standards in Economics so that all students will leave school with a basic understanding of economics and with the problem solving skills needed to become prosperous workers, consumers, and citizens in the next century. To meet these goals, the IUPUI Center for Economic Education and the Indiana Council for Economic Education strive to increase the economic understanding and decision making skills of students by providing educators with a basic understanding of economics, teaching strategies, and curriculum materials which are objective and consistent with state and national educational guidelines.
The Center for Global Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Development
The Center for Global Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Development is an interdisciplinary research and community outreach center that was established in the Indiana University School of Liberal Arts whose primary purpose is to understand the impacts of globalization on Africa and the African diasporas and to build entrepreneurial capacity in the United States and Africa.
The community outreach performed by the center encompasses community building and outreach efforts at the local, national, and international levels of analysis.
With more than 20 Research Fellows now affiliated with its’ operations, CEGESUD is now poised to become one of the top centers in the world which focuses on enhancing entrepreneurial capacity, sustainable development initiatives, and economic growth and development in Africa and minority communities in the United States in the era of globalization.
Dr. Bessie House-Soremekun was appointed by Dr. Bill Blomquist, Dean of the School of Liberal Arts, to serve as its Founding Executive Director. Under Dr. House-Soremekun’s direction, the Center currently focuses its research efforts on the following areas of interest: Sustainable Entrepreneurship, Women’s Entrepreneurship, Capacity Building, Globalization, Minority and Hip Hop Entrepreneurship
The Confucius Institute in Indianapolis
The Confucius Institute in Indianapolis is an a political, non-profit organization. It was established at IUPUI in 2007 to promote the teaching of Chinese language and culture in central Indiana and facilitate mutual understanding between the peoples of China and United States.
Being based in one of America’s largest cities and one of its most important hubs for electronic communications, logistics, and life sciences, the Confucius Institute in Indianapolis is well-placed for developing effective relationships and networks between Indianapolis’s major public university (IUPUI), and its governmental, commercial, and civic leaders.
In developing the Confucius Institute’s public programming, many local organizations have agreed to collaborate, including local universities, Chinese community organizations, business and government agencies, museums, radio and television broadcasters, and organizations that receive international visitors.
Confucius Institute in Indianapolis is located in Cavanaugh Hall at the heart of the IUPUI campus. Its mission is to:
1. Teach Chinese using a variety of methods, including multimedia and the internet;
2. Train teachers to teach Chinese in primary schools, high schools and colleges;
3. Administer the Chinese Proficiency Test and tests to certify ability to teach Chinese as a foreign language;
4. Teach Chinese courses of various types in a variety of arenas;
5. Sponsor academic activities, cultural exchange programs, and Chinese language competitions;
6. Showcase Chinese movies and television programming;
7. Provide consulting services for individuals wishing to study in China;
8. Provide reference materials for educators and other professionals;
9. Promote business exchanges;
10. Facilitate government exchanges.
International Center for Intercultural Communication
International Center for Intercultural Communication (ICIC) is a university-based research and service organization created in 1998 to enhance links between the city of Indianapolis, the state of Indiana, and cultures/nations throughout the world. ICIC strives for excellence in language and intercultural training in academic, professional, and other occupational contexts. The Center is part of the Indiana University School of Liberal Arts in the Department of English at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI).
Institute for American Thought
The Institute for American Thought is a unique research facility bringing to IUPUI and to central Indiana an internationally acclaimed concentration of resources and scholarship that focuses on fundamental strongholds of American thought and culture. The Institute unites the teaching faculty, editing specialists, and research holdings of the Peirce Edition Project, the Santayana Edition, the Josiah Royce Critical Edition, and the Frederick Douglass Papers with the more broadly-based historical, literary and popular culture resources of the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies. All of these research units combine to support the Institute's related academic programs in American studies and professional editing.
The Institute is structured around a research center that supports the work of its academic programs and scholarly editions while providing a singular resource for students and scholars from Indiana and worldwide. In contrast to centers that restrict their focus to the study of American political and economic thought, the Institute focuses more broadly on American contributions to philosophy and to the advancement of thought at the highest intellectual level of Western culture. The Bradbury Center, along with the free-standing but closely affiliated Max Kade Center for German-American Studies, extend the Institute's mainstream resources in American cultural history. Current scholarship in the Institute concentrates on the production of reliable new texts for seminal American thinkers, on the professional editing process that preserves their writings for future generations, and on the understanding and dissemination of American thought and culture through the promotion of related research, public lectures, and other scholarly activities.
The Institute administers both an undergraduate minor and an overseas exchange program in American Studies, and an interdisciplinary graduate certificate in professional editing; it also is associated with the American Philosophy concentration of the Department of Philosophy's master's program. In addition, the Institute provides an editorial home for The New Ray Bradbury Review. No other research institute in the country combines academic programs, textual scholarship, and a research agenda in such a comprehensive program with sizeable archival and library collections documenting the major contributions of seminal figures in American cultural and intellectual history.
The significance and quality of the Institute's holdings has consistently attracted international interest and brings many scholars of American thought and culture to central Indiana. International partnerships with scholar groups in Canada and Germany are already in place, as are two undergraduate student exchange programs with Universities in Great Britain. A resident fellows program attracts researchers who are publishing and teaching in wide-ranging areas of American studies, textual studies, American philosophy, and the history of science. The Institute is working to turn its interrelated programs into a national model for interdisciplinary research, teaching, and publication in support of America's intellectual heritage.
The IU School of Liberal Arts is home to five scholarly edition projects: the Peirce Edition Project, a contributor to the school's research culture since 1976; and four more recent arrivals, the Frederick Douglass Papers, the Santayana Edition, the Josiah Royce Critical Edition, and The Bradbury Edition (The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury). This remarkable concentration of major editions establishes IUPUI as a world center for scholarly editing and provides unique opportunities for our students and faculty.
- Frederick Douglass Papers-Frederick Douglass (1818-95), one of the nineteenth century's most influential human rights activists, escaped slavery in 1838 and became a leading orator, journalist, and historian of the abolition movement, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. The mission of Frederick Douglass Papers Project is to produce scholarly editions of his many works. Yale University Press has published the project's five-volume series of Douglass's speeches, interviews, and debates; two of Douglass's three autobiographies; and one of a contemplated four-volume series of Douglass's correspondence,. Editors are working on the final autobiographical text and the second volume of the Correspondence series, and plan a fourth series consisting of Douglass's published editorials and other short writings. Originating at Yale University, the project moved to West Virginia University before relocating permanently at IUPUI. It is supported by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
- Peirce Edition Project-Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914) was a philosopher, logician, scientist, and mathematician. He is the founder of pragmatism and is considered one of America’s most rigorous and original thinkers. The Peirce Edition Project aims to produce a 30-volume print edition of Peirce’s writings, many never published before, as well as a companion electronic edition. Both are designed to document the development of Peirce’s thought and promote the critical study of his intellectual growth and interdisciplinary impact across the humanities and the sciences. Supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and by private funding, the Peirce Project is assisted by an international team of renowned advisors and contributors. The extensive resources of the Project are part of the Max H. Fisch Library, the research repository of the Institute for American Thought that serves a wide community of students and scholars.
- The Center for Ray Bradbury Studies-By the middle of the twentieth century, Ray Bradbury (1920 - 2012) was well established as a master storyteller, a powerful prose stylist, and a myth-maker for the emerging Space Age. He remains one of America's best-known authors of fantasy, science-fiction, and horror. The recipient of a special Pulitzer Prize for his contribution to these genres as well as the National Medal of Arts and a National Book Award for lifetime achievement, Mr. Bradbury published well over four hundred short stories. His book-length works include The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, Fahrenheit 451, The October Country, Dandelion Wine, and Something Wicked This Way Comes. The Center for Ray Bradbury Studies was established in 2007 and soon began work on The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury, a multi-volume series that recovers the elusive early versions of the stories he wrote between 1938 and 1950. Published by Kent State University Press, The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury is a critical and chronological edition which presents Bradbury's stories to the reading public for the first time in the order in which they were written.. The Center also publishes a journal, The New Ray Bradbury Review, and maintains a major research archive of Bradbury titles, including foreign language editions, and a research library for the broader study of science fiction and fantasy. In 2013 the Center’s archives were greatly expanded by a major gift consisting of Bradbury papers and correspondence, his working library, awards, and mementoes spanning his seven-decade career.
- Santayana Edition-George Santayana (1863-1952) was a Spanish-born American philosopher, best-selling novelist, poet, and critic. After abandoning a successful academic career at Harvard University, he lived a relaxed and ascetic life devoted to contemplation, writing, and quietly generous friendship. His broadly humanistic outlook is grounded in European culture with deep appreciation of Asian philosophy and irreducibly influenced by American experience. Santayana's philosophy is a serious and cheerful alternative to irrationalism of all kinds. It is materialism without reductionism and idealism without fanaticism. The Santayana Edition will produce a 21-volume critical edition of his works published by MIT Press. Edition resources include photocopy collections of correspondence and manuscripts; a library of Santayana first editions, secondary literature, and dissertations; and an archive of reviews and critical articles. The Santayana Edition is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and private donors.
- Josiah Royce Critical Edition-Josiah Royce (1855-1916) was a California mining-town born philosopher who made his way to become a Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University. Among Royce’s students was George Santayana. Royce is known for the broad sweep of his thought, writing about the ultimate context within which we think and live. The "Beloved Community" is one of the concepts he added to our lexicon. Besides sophisticated metaphysical and logical writings, Royce wrote on such topics as war and football. Royce addressed the topics that were central to his time and our time. While considered by many to be merely a religious thinker, Royce contributed much to philosophic, ethics, and social thought.
- Max Kade German-American Center-In cooperation with the department and several community organizations, the IU School of Liberal Arts operates a center for German-related activities in the Duetsche Haus-Athenaeum. The Max Kade Center also offers two awards annually for students to study German overseas, two graduate fellowships, and a scholarship for the dual-degree program in engineering and German.
The National Council on Public History
Founded in 1979-1980, the NCPH grew rapidly as a scholarly and professional society in its first decade and moved its executive office four times before being invited to make its home at IUPUI in 1990, where it has been located for the last 23 years. NCPH is an “external agency” of Indiana University, a separate nonprofit that operates under a memorandum of agreement (MOA) with the IU School of Liberal Arts (SLA). NCPH’s work is dedicated to advancing the field of public history. Today the organization promotes professionalism among history practitioners and encourages their engagement with the public. We are a membership association of consultants, museum professionals, government historians, professors and students, archivists, teachers, cultural resource managers, curators, film and media producers, historical interpreters, policy advisors, and many others. Members confer at the annual meeting each spring and share their expertise in our journal, The Public Historian, the newsletter, Public History News, and on the e-mail listserv, H-Public.
Today there are more than 100 graduate programs in public history and a surge in undergraduate courses and programs across the United States, as well as growing interest abroad. NCPH works in close cooperation with the IUPUI Department of History, which has one of the nation's preeminent Masters of Arts in Public History programs. Currently, NCPH is leading a national effort to reform tenure and promotion policies so that they will more effectively address the public history work of faculty, such as civic engagement projects.
The Polis Center works with communities in Indiana and beyond to develop and apply knowledge, to build collaborations, and to find innovative solutions to common problems. We excel in community-based research and advanced information technologies, especially geographic information systems (GIS). Working in partnership with other organizations, we address issues of mutual concern, and with our network of relationships, we bring together disparate groups and interests to find common ground.
The Polis Center is an academic research center with a practical and applied orientation. The Greek word "polis" means city, and accordingly we concentrate on issues related to metropolitan Indianapolis and other mid-sized American cities. We are multidisciplinary, community-oriented, entrepreneurial, and creative in our approach to problem-solving. We have forged working relationships with community-based organizations; religious bodies; educational, arts, and media organizations; businesses; governments; social service providers; cultural agencies; charitable endowments, and numerous others. We are funded solely by grants and project income. Since 1989, we have managed over 500 projects with more than $40 million in external funding.
The Institute for Research on Social Issues
The IU School of Liberal Arts Institute for Research on Social Issues (IRSI) provides an infrastructure to advance research on social issues through interdisciplinary, collaborative inquiries.
IRSI was established to provide the intellectual stimulation and support intrinsic to groupings of like-minded social science scholars. IRSI Researchers investigate such topics as health, human ecology, economics, race and ethnic studies, family and gender studies, marketing and communications, and religion, to name a few. IRSI's mission is supported by the GIS Research Center, the Global Health Communications Center, the Survey Research Center, the Center for Health Geographics, the Health Research Group, the Violence Against Women and Human Rights Study Group, and international partnerships which include the IUPUI-Moi Workgroup and China Studies Workgroup.
IRSI Collaborating Centers include the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture, the Family Violence Institute, the Center for Health Research, and The Polis Center.
The Spanish Resource Center
The Spanish Resource Center (SRC) in the IU School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI(located in Cavanaugh Hall 205) is the result of cooperative efforts between the Department of World Languages and Cultures and the Spanish Embassy’s Ministry of Education. Its mission is to improve the teaching of the Spanish language and culture in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and Illinois, providing a meeting place for those involved in the teaching and study of Hispanic language and culture, including teachers, students, and administrators of all levels. Established in 1998, it is the only Spanish Resource Center in Indiana, and one of only 12 across the country. It provides a large collection of Spanish learning resources (books, videos, DVDs and CDs) and other services to students and teachers of Spanish such as conversation hours, film series, professional development workshops, and immersion days. The Center also promotes various programs and scholarships run by the Spanish Ministry of Education in conjunction with the Departments of Education of the four states mentioned above and several school districts and universities in the Midwest.
The Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture
The Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture is a research and public outreach institute devoted to the promotion of the understanding of the relation between religion and other features of American culture. Established in 1989, the Center is based in the IU School of Liberal Arts at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Now with almost 50 research fellows, the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture is considered the premier research institute in the nation working in American religious studies.
Center activities include national conferences and symposia, books, essays, bibliographies and research projects, fellowships for young scholars, data-based communication about developments in the field of American religion, a newsletter devoted to the promotion of Center activities, and the semiannual scholarly periodical Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation, which is among the highest-ranked academic journals in the nation.
The Sussman-Steinmetz Research Library
The Sussman - Steinmetz Research Library was established through a contribution of the books, journals, and papers of Marvin B. Sussman, an internationally known family sociologist, through the initiative of Professor Suzanne K. Steinmetz of the IUPUI Sociology Department. Located in Cavanaugh Hall 316, the library contains an extensive collection of family science and sociology books and journals with emphasis on population/demography, aging, family violence, sexuality, medical/health, law, history, race/ethnicity, and deviance. The library is available to students, staff, and faculty for research use. Materials do not circulate.
The University Writing Center (UWC) is a service available to all IUPUI students, both graduate and undergraduate. Students can work one-on-one with experienced readers and writers to improve their writing process and receive constructive feedback on their assignments. The service is provided through the IUPUI School of Liberal Arts, the English Department, and the Writing Program with support provided by University College and University Library.