Visit the LASSR Website for more information.
Lab for Applied Social Science Research (LASSR) focuses on a series of critical issues of public concern including policing, community relations, health disparities, and education inequality. LASSR aims to partner and collaborate with government entities, organizations, and businesses to better address these issues. LASSR was developed after a group of social scientists realized that the innovative research being conducting inside of universities was limited in its ability to extend outside of universities. LASSR aims to better collaborate with policy makers and community members to bridge the gap between academics and non-academics. LASSR’s core belief is that scholarly research can simultaneously be rigorous and applied directly to impacting policy and community.
A central goal of LASSR is to become a key point of contact within the academic community for policy makers, business leaders, and organizations wanting to collaborate and conduct research on a pressing issue of public concern. LASSR aims to be the premier research laboratory for the Baltimore/Washington DC Corridor. LASSR’s objective is to have available research study designs that can be replicated across the United States to build an infrastructure for research on policing, community relations, health disparities, and education inequality.
LASSR has three core aims:
- Conduct objective, innovative, and methodologically-rigorous social science research that has applicability to policy outcomes
- Connect social science research outcomes directly to policy in order to continue the legacy of Congressman Parren J. Mitchell
- Train the next generation of individuals who view the connections between social science research and policy as paramount for the betterment of society
