The University at Albany Center
for Social and Demographic Analysis (CSDA) was created in 1981 under
the direction of Richard Alba (Distinguished Professor of Sociology).
At that time, CSDA had a modest budget and staff, consisting of a half-time
programmer and secretary. Office space was provided by the University
in the basement of one of the student dormitories. In this early phase
of its history, the primary mission of CSDA was to facilitate the research
of a relatively small group of Albany population scientists, virtually
all of whom were faculty members in the
Department of Sociology. CSDA became a focal point for further investments
by the University administration. Strategic faculty recruitments, additional
staff, and allied capital improvements-particularly in its computing
infrastructure-enabled CSDA to further expand its mission of facilitating
and enhancing population research at the University at Albany. Positioned
by these developments, CSDA applied for an NICHD Population Center Core
Grant (P30) in October of 1996. This application was reviewed successfully,
and CSDA officially joined the roster of NICHD Population Centers in
September of 1997 and has now received support through June 2007.
CSDA's mission is to facilitate and organize population
research and education of the highest caliber. It will accomplish this
overarching mission by pursuing the following specific objectives:
* Creating a stimulating and cohesive intellectual environment conducive
to the development of multidisciplinary population scholarship, particularly
in the areas of Spatial Inequalities and Vulnerable Populations
* Facilitating the interchange of theories, ideas, methods, and data
between traditional population scientists and other fields, programs,
and research units
* Assisting researchers in acquiring and accessing social science data
sets most appropriate to their research programs
* Providing state-of-the-art computer programming, software, hardware,
and statistical support for population research
* Helping researchers prepare grant proposals and manage the day-to-day
administration and execution of their grants
* Providing access to key sources of information, including census documents,
surveys and codebooks, hard-to-find publications and working papers,
and other reference materials
* Fostering demographic research through mentoring the new generation
of population scientists and helping researchers remain active in midcareer
* Providing demographic information and expertise to the wider academic
community and the general public
CSDA works together with several
other research centers at the University at Albany. The most notable
tie is with the Lewis
Mumford Center for Comparative Urban and Regional Research. The
Mumford Center was established in 1987 under the direction of geographer
Ray Bromley. In its first decade it functioned primarily to organize
seminars and conferences involving faculty from several departments
with interests in urban and regional issues. In the summer of 1999,
with the appointment of John Logan (Distinguished Professor of Sociology)
as director, the University at Albany made a substantial new investment
in the center, including professional and secretarial staff, a supplies
and expenses budget, and office space. The Mumford Center has a long
history of partnership with CSDA, beginning with a joint project on
inner cities funded by the Rockefeller Foundation (1990-1991), and continuing
presently with the Urban
China Research Network, funded with a five-year grant from the Mellon
Foundation (2000-2005). All Mumford Center research projects with NSF
or NIH support have been administered jointly with CSDA and have relied
on CSDA for infrastructural support. The Mumford Center has recently
developed a major public infrastructure program related to Census 2000,
which has garnered support from the Ford Foundation and has brought
considerable national visibility to population research at the University
at Albany. The Mumford Center staff has a high level of expertise in
extraction and manipulation of census data. The staff also has considerable
expertise in Geographic Information Systems, including web-based GIS
systems for information dissemination.
Since July 2004, Richard
Alba has served as the director of both CSDA and the Mumford Center.
Nancy
Denton is Associate Director of CSDA and
Glenn Deane is Associate Director of the Mumford Center. The intention
is to facilitate cooperation between CSDA and the Mumford Center, to
make more effective use of the University's enhanced support for both
centers, and to pursue several new initiatives that have the potential
to raise population research at the University to a higher level. While
both centers will maintain unique functions for their partially overlapping
faculty and student constituencies, they will continue to work closely
together.