The mission of the Hamovitch Social Work Research Center is to support faculty engaged in basic and applied research focused on the needs, behaviors and problems of groups which are vulnerable in society because of their at-risk status and to study the service delivery systems related to these populations.

In 2005, the name was changed to the Hamovitch Center for Science in the Human Services in order to reflect the nature of our research, training and development. The following four objectives guide the activities of the center:

1. The center has a commitment to university-community collaboration.
   
   
2. The center's activities are directed toward basic and applied research relevant to the improvement of human services to clients and to the dissemination of research findings.
   
   
3. The center fosters and promotes interdisciplinary research across schools and departments within USC and across universities throughout the world.
   
   
4. The center seeks to train the next generation of researchers in
   sophisticated methodologies that span quantitative and qualitative approaches to the phenomena we study.