Who we are
  
  
The School of Public Policy and Social Research was established in 1994 to set a new direction for policy education, research and action. The School's distinctive approach emphasizes solving problems across boundaries, particularly at the intersection where the public, private, and non-governmental sectors meet. 
 
Although it is one of the country's newest policy programs, the School is also one of the largest, incorporating two longstanding UCLA units with distinguished reputations -- the departments of Social Welfare and Urban Planning -- with a vibrant new Department of Policy Studies. With 75 faculty and fellows and more than 500 students, the School offers master's degrees in public policy, social welfare and urban planning, and doctoral degrees in social welfare and urban planning. It is also one of the few policy schools with a major commitment to undergraduate education, offering a popular minor in public policy. 
  The School houses 10 active research centers: the Center for Child and Family Policy Studies; the Center for Communication Policy; the Center for Health Policy Research; the Institute of Industrial Relations; the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies; the North American Integration and Development Center; the Institute of Transportation Studies; the Center for Labor Research and Education; the Center for Policy Research on Aging; and the Center for International Science, Technology and Cultural Policy. These centers tap the expertise of faculty from across the UCLA campus to address such issues as welfare reform, immigration, urban poverty, health care financing, economic development, and an aging world population. 
 
The School's chief outreach program, the UCLA Policy Forum (which includes the Advanced Policy Institute), acts both as a catalyst for dialogue on critical issues and as a leader in training and other programs that draw on the expertise of the entire UCLA campus to improve the performance of public, private and non-profit organizations.