NU plans to create social science school

As part of its long-term ambition to become a nationally known research university, officials at Northeastern University are working on a sweeping plan to create a new School of Social Science, Urban Affairs, and Public Policy.

Proponents say the new school would attract higher-caliber students and faculty to a university better known for more industry-oriented offerings, such as engineering and health sciences. At the same time, they say, it would provide a major boost to Boston and the region by dramatically ramping up the university's efforts to help tackle local social and economic problems.

The school, which would require raising tens of millions of dollars, would combine existing social science departments with eight new interdisciplinary centers, and would involve topics that would include ethics and international affairs.

The school would ''enhance Northeastern's reputation and advance exceptional teaching and research, but also really be a partner with the city and the state in a way that no other university in the city, or perhaps in the country, has done," said Barry Bluestone, director of Northeastern's Center for Urban and Regional Policy and the main architect of the plan for the new school.

''We could make a meaningful contribution in sustaining prosperity in the Commonwealth," he said yesterday.

While Northeastern's idea is unique nationally in some respects, it is part of a heartening trend toward greater civic engagement on the part of local universities, said Paul S. Grogan, president of the Boston Foundation.

Grogan pointed to two smaller public policy centers with a strong local focus that have opened in recent years: the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and the University College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University.

''It's not just all of a sudden people in universities deciding to be better citizens," Grogan said.

''There's some of that, and I welcome it," he added, ''but there's a true alliance, where universities realize they are going to get better students and faculty if the city and region are vital, dynamic places, and that they can contribute to making that happen."

Northeastern's Faculty Senate is likely to vote next week on starting the School of Social Science, Bluestone said. The idea would then have to be approved by the trustees.

If approved, the school would be inaugurated between June and September with the existing programs. The real changes, such as opening the new centers and hiring new faculty, would take three to five years of vigorous fund-raising from foundations and individuals, Bluestone said.

Naming rights for the school would be available to a particularly generous donor.

Northeastern's outgoing president, Richard M. Freeland, has been involved in developing the proposal, and members of the social science departments that would join the new school voted 60 to 2 in favor of it last fall, Bluestone said. The idea has been presented to Mayor Thomas M. Menino and other civic leaders, according to university officials.

For several years under Freeland's leadership, Northeastern has focused on boosting quality and competitiveness, with an explicit goal of breaking into the top 100 national universities in the US News & World Report rankings.

With new buildings all over campus, a program to hire 100 new professors, and heavy investment in biotechnology, the university shot up in the rankings from 150 to 115 between the 2002 and 2006 editions.

At the same time, Freeland has emphasized the 25,000-student campus's commitment to playing a positive role in Boston.

Bluestone arrived at Northeastern in 1999 to start his new center.

He had spent years teaching at Boston College and at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. He believed, he said, that departments at Northeastern, such as economics, sociology, and political science, were too small to attain national status on their own, but that if they were grouped together with a strong focus on urban policy, they could attract some of the best graduate students and faculty in the country.

''It's a little difficult attracting graduate students to Northeastern when they get acceptance letters from Stanford," Bluestone said. ''But if we can say, 'You have access to this whole school with political scientists and economists with urban interests. . .' "

''While we may not have the best sociology department in the country, we can have one of the best for sociology and urban policy," he said.

The new school would be within the College of Arts and Sciences. The economics, sociology, political science, history, and African-American studies departments, as well as the law, policy, and society program, would continue in present form, as part of the new school. So would several existing centers, including Bluestone's and the Center for Labor Market Studies.

But the new school would also be home to eight entirely new, cross-disciplinary centers that would cover topics including quantitative methods in social science, survey research, and geography and mapping. A ''world-class cities project" would examine mid-size cities such as Boston, Barcelona, and Vancouver. There would be programs to bring together journalists and policymakers, and a fellowship program for community leaders to spend a short time on campus. Bluestone said he hopes the school will raise enough money for a building that would open in the evenings for community events.

Perhaps the biggest concern at Northeastern has been that a new school would drain resources away from other parts of the university. But officials say the school will be funded with new money.

Even some rivals are hailing Northeastern's plan as good for the city.

Bluestone and his Northeastern colleagues ''are much better than we are at the technical details of what's going on in the city or whether an academic idea is going to get through the Legislature," said Edward L. Glaeser, director of Harvard's Rappaport Institute. ''It's terrific to have more strength in this area."

Marcella Bombardieri can be reached at bombardieri@globe.com.