Message from the Chair

Wayne State University President, Irvin D. Reid, has set forth a strategic vision for the university as the nation’s pre-eminent public and urban research university. One of the five key goals of the strategic plan involves achieving pre-eminence in research and scholarship. President Reid has recognized the area of children’s health, education, and development as one of the research and training strengths of the university that needs to be built upon to help achieve this goal.

The Children’s Bridge has been created to coordinate the more than 16 centers', institutes', departments', or colleges' efforts to establish the university as a leader in children’s health and development.  To launch this project, President Reid has committed at least $1.8 million in funding in the 2006-2007 academic year to seed projects that will support this plan.

To position faculty to benefit as fully as possible from the funding program and to guide the project, a Steering Committee composed of researchers from across the university has been organized to establish topic-based working groups to develop interdisciplinary projects and to submit grants to support these projects; to create a database for and about researchers interested in children, youth, and families for availability on the Children's Bridge Web site; and to construct a registry that would allow researchers across the university to conduct collaborative investigations on a broad range of issues and facilitate projects benefiting from a longitudinal design. Significant progress has been achieved on all three objectives, providing a firm foundation for the expansion of the project.

I invite you to visit our site and to share ideas for strengthening or expanding our project. If you are a WSU faculty member or a student please consider joining The Children's Bridge.