Welcome from the Director
Dr. Robert Fisher
Director, Urban and Community Studies
It is indeed a pleasure and a privilege to introduce you to Urban and Community Studies at the University of Connecticut Tri-Campus. Urban and Community Studies (UCS) is a dynamic program which engages undergraduate students and faculty in the study and improvement of our cities and communities. With the fall of 2006 we’re beginning our sixth year, though Urban Studies has a long history at UCONN. It started in 1974 and reached its heyday a decade later. Now the program is taking off again, due to changes in the major. First, the program was expanded to include the Tri-Campus regional sites (at Greater Hartford, Waterbury, and Torrington) as well as Storrs. Second, we renamed the program Urban and Community Studies in order to reflect a dual emphasis on cities and communities. Now we’re more in tune not only with student and faculty interests but also contemporary needs and concerns. Third, we revised the curriculum to make it fit better the needs of students and the expertise of faculty. The flexibility of the new curriculum makes it much easier for a student at one of the regional campuses to complete the UCS degree in four years.
I am proud to report that in our five years we have created at the Greater Hartford and Waterbury sites, and to a lesser extent at the Torrington campus, an attractive and practical, student-centered, interdisciplinary B.A. program in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The regional campuses offer students an intellectually dynamic education with small classes and close working relations between students, faculty, and staff. Moreover, the regional campuses provide opportunities for students interested in Urban and Community Studies to participate in an applied and engaged learning experience. This applied dimension not only gets students out into the community, it helps to fulfill the University’s land grant mission to the State of Connecticut by studying urban and community needs and concerns; engaging with communities and community agencies directly through course work, service learning and internships; and contributing to the improvement of urban and community life. Moreover, UCS has a first-rate faculty who are committed to undergraduate and graduate education, applied and interdisciplinary scholarship, and civic engagement. For example, six of our faculty have published books in the last four years, and many of us are doing grant-funded research on critical urban and community issues.
Because we are meeting a need at both the Tri-Campus and Storrs of students interested in a liberal arts education focused on urban issues and social change, and of students interested in careers in public and community service, we have grown remarkably, both in numbers of student majoring in UCS and the number of students enrolled in our classes. At this writing there are approximately 57 majors at the Tri-Campus. We have also begun to establish a presence in the communities we serve as a new and dynamic representative of the University of Connecticut. Alumni of our program have gone on to careers or graduate school in social work, law, business, and education. Our goal is to become the center for UConn education and initiatives on urban issues and a critical site for UConn initiatives in civic engagement. We are excited by the potential of UCS -- what it has to offer students and faculty as well as the communities we serve - and we welcome your interest in our program.