The SGCI held a reception on October 29 at UConn Hartford to formally commemorate its “launch” to the greater UConn community (consisting of faculty, researchers, and staff), marking an important milestone in its first year of operation. The primary goal of the reception was to increase visibility, gather feedback from UConn community members, and cultivate university-wide support for the SGCI’s goal of becoming formally incorporated as a permanent university research institute.
Several dozen attendees filled the SGCI suite, located on the 5th floor of the Hartford Times Building. Brief remarks were shared by Mark Overmyer-Velazquez (UConn Hartford Campus Director), Daniel Weiner (Vice President for Global Affairs), and Bob Wilson (Interim Director, SGCI) while a looping slideshow presented information about the SGCI and its recently-launched Faculty Affiliates program. As of October 29, the Faculty Affiliates program already has over 70 registered UConn faculty members – an encouraging sign of university-wide excitement about a new unit focused on cities-related research!
This particular launch event was attended exclusively by UConn affiliates; talks are already in the works about having a more public and outward-facing launch event sometime in the Spring 2020 semester to introduce the SGCI to potential community (government, nonprofit, and corporate) partners.
The slideshow presented at the event, seen below, contains several interesting facts about the SGCI and the diversity of its first 70 Faculty Affiliates. The slideshow can also be downloaded in its entirety from the SGCI Reference Materials page.
SGCI Launch Reception Slideshow, October 2019
