SGCI News

SGCI Sponsors “Writing Hartford” Undergraduate Essay Prize

The SGCI is proud to announce the “Writing Hartford” Undergraduate Essay Prize for the 2019 – 2020 academic year!

Developed in collaboration with UConn Hartford’s “Writing Hartford” initiative, the prize will be awarded to two undergraduate authors whose projects engage with the city of Hartford (its people, places, or other city-related issues) in some significant way.  The “Writing Hartford” initiative has had incredible success in encouraging students to venture forth, explore, and write about all that the city of Hartford has to offer, and the SGCI is proud to further support these efforts by sponsoring a monetary prize for exemplary student work.  Our thanks to Scott Campbell, Associate Professor of English and coordinator for Writing Hartford, for his help in designing and implementing this competition.

There will be one prize awarded in each of two categories: First Year (freshmen authors) and Undergraduate (open to all undergraduates regardless of year).  For the purposes of this competition, “writing” is broadly defined; submissions may be written essays and/or may include multimedia components as well.  Undergraduate students may submit their own work, or a faculty member may submit it on their behalf.  For full details, or to submit an entry, visit the official Writing Hartford Undergraduate Essay Prize page or click the image below.

While the subject matter concerns Hartford, we want to emphasize that this competition is open to ALL undergraduates students at all UConn campuses!  The final date for submissions is June 1, 2020.

writing hartford undergraduate essay prize poster


SGCI Launch Reception at UConn Hartford

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


Welcome to the new SGCI website!

Welcome to https://cities.hartford.uconn.edu, the new online home of the Sustainable Global Cities Initiative!  Over the course of the next few months, we hope to greatly expand our digital presence by adding downloadable resources, an online directory of our Faculty Affiliates, a news page, links to current academic and community events, and more.  Stay tuned!

If you have any questions or comments about the SGCI or our website, please contact us at sgci@uconn.edu.