The Center provides support for core interest groups, in which faculty, graduate students, and visiting scholars will focus on topics of mutual concern. The goals of these working groups are identifying when and why people, individually and collectively, become actively involved in doing good for others and for society.
Examples of four such core interest groups are:
- studies of individuals who have become actively involved in doing good for society;
- studies of organizations that foster participation on the part of its members;
- studies of communities with high levels of citizen participation and civic engagement;
- studies of cultures that foster and promote the ideals of participation and involvement.
In addition, the Center sponsors and supports a variety of other ongoing activities designed to promote the sharing of intellectual perspectives, the building of connections between and among participants and their research interests, the development of collaborative research agendas that leverage the individual expertise of the Center participants.
Examples of such ongoing activities are:
- an ongoing seminar series, at which one of the Center participants will be responsible for a presentation and seminar discussion related to current and planned research;
- scholarly conferences, in which panels of participants are invited to come to the Center to present their research relevant to the theme of the conference and to discuss possible collaborative ventures involving the Center;
- guest speakers, who will be invited to present the results of their newest research;
- scholarly visits by researchers from other institutions (either short term visits of a week to ten days, or longer visits of a semester or full academic year to be coordinated with visitors' sabbaticals from their home institutions).