Youth Research Council

Interested in joining the 2025-2026 YRC?

Visit here for more information and to apply:

or enter the following link in your browser:

https://cssr.gmu.edu/initiatives/yrc/2025-2026-youth-research-council

For additional questions, please contact yrc@gmu.edu.

The YRC application process for 2025-2026 will open October 13, 2025 and will be due no later than November 2, 2025. No late or incomplete applications will be considered. The YRC will convene in January 2026 and meet through May 2026.

Check out the YRC’s most recent presentation about our methods and findings on the multiple meanings of school safety.

The Youth Research Council (YRC) is a research collaborative and community-based experiential learning innovation. Launched in the Fall 2021, the Youth Research Council is a partnership of the Sociology and Anthropology Department’s Center for Social Science Research (CSSR), Mason’s Early Identification Program (EIP), Johns Hopkins School of Education Center for the Social Organization of Schools and the University of the District of Columbia Division of Arts and Humanities.

The YRC embraces a scaffolded model of learning with the goal to integrate students at various stages of the social science pipeline. High school students serve as YRC Fellows, while undergraduate and graduate students serve as research mentors and research assistants.

YRC Group Work 2 The YRC also aims to act in an advisory capacity to local and regional organizations, school districts, and governments as they conduct research about youth and advise university faculty and students on how to conduct research that speaks to the needs and builds on the strengths of youth.

In this work, the Youth Research Council has several guiding goals:

  1. To promote community capacity building and racial equity through research activities.

  2. Build a more durable student pipeline for the social sciences.

  3. Serve as a bridge between community area schools and George Mason University. Over the course of one academic year, YRC Fellows identify research problems, study them using rigorous social science methods, and offer evidence-based recommendations and solutions for change. The YRC imagines social research as a critical component of contemporary civic education goals. The goal is research for impact.

Thanks to the YRC’s partnership with the Early Identification Program, which has existing collaborative relationships with area schools, the YRC co-directors conducted outreach and student recruitment across all high schools in Prince William, Fairfax and Loudon County as well as Alexandria City, Fall Church City, Manassas City, and Manassas Park. All area students enrolled in 9th through 12th grades were eligible to apply; 36 students from 20 different high schools are 2021-2022 YRC Founding Fellows.

For more on the YRC, check out this video from our first year:

Or from our second year:

For more information contact:

  • Meagan Call-Cummings at meagan.call-cummings@jhu.edu
  • Amy Best at abest@gmu.edu
  • Khaseem Davis at kdavisi@gmu.edu
  • Bethany Monea at bethany.monea@udc.edu
  • or yrc@gmu.edu

YRC Group Work 6

This project is a partnership between:

  • George Mason University
    • Center for Social Science Research
    • Early Identification Program
  • Johns Hopkins University School of Education 
    • Everyone Graduates Center

  • University of the District of Columbia

  • Georgetown University School of Medicine