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The Howard W. Odum Institute for Research in Social Science Manning Hall, CB #3355 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC 27599 919-962-3061 Contact Webmaster

About the Institute

Director's Welcome to the Institute

Kenneth A. Bollen

Director, H.W. Odum Institute for Research in Social Science

H.R. Immerwahr Distinguished Professor of Sociology

Founded in 1924, the H. W. Odum Institute for Research in Social Science is the nation's oldest multidisciplinary social science university institute. Indeed, we are the oldest institute or center at the nation's first public university, UNC- Chapel Hill.* The mission of the Odum Institute parallels that of the University as a whole -- teaching, research, and service -- but the Institute's focus is on the social sciences. The Odum Institute is not part of any one school or department. Rather it stretches across virtually the entire university community and beyond, touching students, faculty, and staff from public health, social work, business, government, and the arts and sciences. People come from all corners of the university to take advantage of the training and courses, consulting services, data, software, and facilities that the Institute offers. The Odum Institute also has served as an incubator for other centers. The institute started the Center for Urban and Regional Studies in 1957 and launched it as an independent center in 1969. The Center for the Study of the American South began in 1992 as an Odum Institute initiative and is now an independent Center. We currently serve as the administrative home for the Citizen Soldier Support Program that was developed in 2005. I invite you to explore our web site to see the various activities and services that we offer to faculty, students, and staff at the University. If you have other ideas on how we can help, feel free to contact me.

* A general history of our Institute is in Guy B. Johnson & Guion G. Johnson's Research in Service to Society: The First Fifty Years of the Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North Carolina (1980, University of North Carolina Press). The important role of women in the development of the Institute are described in Kay R. Broschart (2002) "Research in the Service of Society: Women at the Institute for Research in Social Science." The American Sociologist Fall, pages 92-106. John Reed, a former director, also has a short history of the Odum Institute. See the related link below.