Blog

It is a quiet Summer at CUGS so far. The usual annual excitement with the China Program is missing, thanks to the pandemic, and we still have not returned to a “normal” state of activity on campus at 70 Vernon Street. We have a ton of things to look forward to and to plan for, though, and that is keeping us busy.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Urban Studies David Lukens and rising senior Matt Powell ’22 are working together on researching Parkville Market. Parkville Market opened last year on Park Street, one mile west of the Trinity College campus.

Samia Khoder ’21 ended her senior year at Trinity with awards and accolades recognizing her for the academic rigor and unique experiences that defined her four years. This spring, Khoder was awarded first prize of the Jeffrey E. Kelter ’76 Student Urban Research Prize for her thesis titled “Urban Authenticity: The Changing Meaning of Racial Difference in the Making and Remaking of the City.” Khoder also received the Outstanding Urban Studies Senior Award and received a W.H. Russell Fellowship. The fellowship includes a scholarship for graduate school, which Samia will use as she furthers her studies at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, Germany.

Rome campus Professor Piero Vereni's course "Urban and Global Rome" is being offered online this semester and is cross-listed with urban studies. Vereni has been teaching the course at Trinity’s Rome campus since 2009. Prior to teaching the class, he had never taught English native speakers before and took the opportunity as a welcome challenge. Though he has now become a veteran at teaching students in English, this year brought a new challenge to teaching American students about Rome.

As the incoming Director of Urban Studies this semester, I begin by thanking Professor Yipeng Shen of LACS for his excellent service as the Interim Director of URST for the last three semesters. While contributing his valuable outsider perspectives and insights to URST, this temporary role has turned him into much more of an urbanist than when he took on his interim responsibility and a closely affiliated faculty of the program. I welcome Terry Romero back to her familiar role as the URST’s Administrative Assistant, which she performed admirably for a few years previously.

We have arrived at the point of Spring 2021 when those classes that are “in-person” have started. For the first time in 4 months, we have students on campus. A few faculty and staff are here too. On my twice-weekly visits to campus, which I have been doing since November, it is now finally the case that I see other human beings, but it is still a strange thing to see many nearly empty spaces. Extrapolating outward from Vernon Street, as we frequently do here at CUGS, it is hard not to miss what a year of pandemic closures and restrictions have done and are continuing to do to Hartford, and to cities around the world.

This feature of Daniel Kane M'20 is our first feature of an urban planning graduate student. The first cohort of the graduate certificate in urban planning finished the program in December 2020. Despite its newness, the program has attracted a strong initial cohort, with several more students finishing the program in May 2021.

Last November, Gabby Nelson, Assistant Director of Urban Engaged Learning and a student in Trinity’s graduate programs in Public Policy and Urban Planning, presented her original research on the impact of Community Development Corporations (“CDCs”) in Connecticut neighborhoods at Tipping Point 2020, a national conference on affordable housing hosted by the Partnership for Strong Communities.

While some urban studies courses were in-person this semester, including those taught by Garth Myers and David Lukens, others took place in a remote format. Professors Jonathan Elukin, Laura Delgado, ...

What a semester that was! As with Trinity, CUGS managed to cope with the unprecedented conditions of Fall 2020, and that meant several areas of programming went on – virtually – in an effective manner. The Global Vantage Points lecture series featured a set of excellent talks, and attendance via Zoom was above where it typically is for in-person seminars. The Cities Program, with two remote seminar classes, remained a lively forum for 14 outstanding first-year students. CUGS supported several terrific online events with the Connecticut World Affairs Council. The graduate certificate program in Urban Planning kicked off successfully and continues to attract more students, thanks in no small measure to instructors like Prof. Sean Fitzpatrick and Dr. Don Poland. The Urban Studies major is growing larger every month, with 17 seniors, a record-breaking 25 juniors, and already 9 sophomores making it the 10th-largst major at the college presently. Our Kelter Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr. Laura Delgado, successfully began her post-doc (virtually) with a terrific rendition of URST 301: Community Development Strategies.