CSSI affiliate Ashley Rila, clinical assistant professor of special education in the College of Education, studies burnout experiences of school staff, including paraeducators, in Iowa, where critical shortages of these professionals persist. Last summer, Rila participated in CSSI’s Summer Researcher-in-Residence program, which gave her dedicated time and space to develop her manuscript on burnout among paraeducators.

The Center for Social Science Innovation seeks faculty and scientific staff to participate in its Summer Researcher-in-Residence program. The 10-week program provides researchers with space and resources to conduct high impact social science research. Participants also receive up to $1,500 for research-related expenses, such as support from a graduate research assistant. Apply by March 27, 2026.

CSSI researcher affiliates Ken Brown and Brian An recently purchased 10 questions through CSSI's SurveyHarvest initiative. Results from the survey of 1,000 U.S. adults yielded surprising results as to how people are using artificial intelligence tools in their personal and professional lives, prompting a drive to dive deeper. Read about the findings from Iowa Capital Dispatch.

The spring 2026 calendar for CSSI's Social Science Methods Series has been announced! The semester will kick off with a workshop on research data management essentials with Brian Westra, data services librarian. Other workshop topics include network analysis, factor analysis, data visualization in Stata, longitudinal modeling, geospatial data analysis in R, python, and Large Language Models (LLM). Take a look at the full Spring 2026 workshop lineup.