The Eugene M. Lang Center for Civic and Social Responsibility was established to inspire and provide vision, leadership and support toward fulfilling an essential dimension of the liberal arts mission of Swarthmore College: to prepare and motivate students to understand and engage issues of civic and social concern and, as active citizens of the US and other countries, to set their own paths toward shaping a more just and compassionate world.
Signature programs of the Lang Center include the Lang Visiting Professorship, which brings a renowned scholar for a period of residency, teaching, and community interaction, and also the Lang Opportunity Scholarship Program. As its central feature, the Lang Opportunity Scholarship Program offers each competitively selected Scholar the opportunity and related funding to conceive, design and carry out an Opportunity Project that creates a needed social resource and/or effects a significant social change or improved condition of a community in the United States or abroad.