Author: Winnick, Maria

Announcement of new department home for UCS

Beginning July 1st, the Urban and Community Studies will become part of a new Department of Geography, Sustainability, Community and Urban Studies.

You may have seen last week’s article in the Daily Campus about our UCS Program: https://dailycampus.com/2024/03/08/college-of-liberal-arts-and-sciences-adds-two-new-departments/

Over the last three years, our program, the Department of Geography, and the Environmental Studies Program have had very productive talks about bringing our programs together under one roof. The time seemed right to bring these programs together in ways that will strengthen all three.

As we wrote in our proposal to the UConn Board of Trustees that was approved last week, the new department will conduct “community-engaged research and teaching on the urgent environmental, social, and geographical challenges and opportunities faced by communities around the globe in the twenty-first century. Our world class faculty address questions related to sustainability, resilience, health, and social inequities from local to global scales under the converging impacts of rapid climate change and increasing global urbanization,” and that the new department will be “deeply committed to cultivating an inclusive environment for our diverse community of faculty, staff, and students. As part of this commitment, our vision and initiatives are centered around values of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion…to identify pressing environmental and social justice issues facing societies today.”

The creation of this new department will not alter the degree plan you are currently following in our program.  Your degree requirements are governed by the catalog year in which you declared the major or minor.

The name of the program will change on July 1st, but the majors and minors we support will continue to be offered as you move toward graduation. 

Over the next 2-3 years the faculty and staff of the new department will work to create new course offerings, perhaps also new or revised majors, minors, and graduate programs, but these changes won’t happen immediately. For now, I just wanted to share this good news and what it shows about UConn’s commitment to our program.

Please let me know if you have questions about these changes. I can be reached by email at ken.foote@uconn.edu

 

Ken Foote, Director

Urban and Community Studies Program

UCS Fall 2024 Schedule

Below is the UCS Fall 2024 course schedule. Please remember that course information may periodically change. We will update the schedule on our website and send out emails or weekly newsletter announcements when significant changes occur. If you have not already made an appointment to meet with your UCS advisor, please do so as soon as possible since some classes may have limited seats.

Fall 2024

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    Spring courses in UCS major/minor with seats available

    Dear UCS Majors and Minors,

     

    UCS has a few courses that still have seats available this spring on the various campuses. Some of the offerings are online and others are in person. If are seeking another course in the UCS major or minor, please take note of these offerings listed below. If you have any questions as to whether you should enroll in one of these courses as it pertains to your specific degree plan, then we encourage you to contact your UCS advisor for guidance.

    URBN 3998, Variable Topic: Human Services in Policing

    Tuesdays, 3:30pm top 6:00pm (Online Synchronous) with Bryan Hall

    Supporting (Group IV) course in the UCS major/minor

    Search Online o­fferings – This course is listed under Waterbury in Student Admin. but is open to all students.

    Please note:, If you are interested in this specific topic you are encouraged to enroll this semester if it fits your degree plan and schedule. This course is not likely to be offered next year on any campus since it is only offered periodically.

    • This course focuses on the diverse assortment of policing issues and challenges involving the enforcement of laws while simultaneously protecting and effectively partnering with the public.
    • Students in this course will engage in practical discussion and exercises to explore the importance of ethical behavior pertaining to controversial issues and decision-making in law enforcement.
    • Through those discussions, exercises and a final group presentation, the student will be able to better analyze the complexities of policing while articulating the need for law enforcement to infuse aspects of human services that are built upon social justice and anti-racist frameworks.

     

    SOCI 3201, Methods of Social Research

    Tuesdays & Thursdays, 9:30am – 10:45am (Online Synchronous – Hartford Campus Listing) with Kim Price-Glynn

    Methods (Group III) course in UCS major

    UCS majors may seek a permission number if their home campus is not Hartford by contacting Prof. Kim Price-Glynn

     

    In our information saturated world, it is easy to be overwhelmed. Social media and news feeds are filled with reports on societies, social institutions, and the behavior of social groups. Often, we do not know where this information comes from or how reliable it is. How can we distinguish good information from bad? One answer is to understand how research is produced.

     

    URBN 2000, Intro. to Urban and Community Studies

    Tuesdays & Thursdays, 11:00AM – 12:15PM (In Person – Hartford Campus) with Ken Foote

    Required Core (Group I) in UCS major/minor

     

    URBN 2000 is an interdisciplinary introduction to the intricacies and complexities of urban communities and urban life in the U.S. and around the world.  We will be focusing on the city as a physical and spatial system as well as a place defined by its people and the political, social, cultural, economic institutions that shape city life. The social and behavioral dynamics of urban communities, including the diversity produced by factors such as race, class, gender, and ethnicity. The course will help to understand the interplay of environmental, social, economic, and political forces that shape many contemporary cities. If you are considering a major or minor in Urban and Community Studies, URBN 2000 counts as a core course in both.

     

    POLS 3632, Urban Politics

    Mondays, 4pm to 6:30pm (In Person – Hartford Campus) with Brian Waddell

    Core (Group II) course in UCS major/minor

     

    Cities in Europe are considered the jewels of the continent with residents and tourists flocking to them as the most desirable places.  In the U.S. cities grew incredibly quickly as the landing place for millions of immigrants and migrants from rural areas.  Their chaotic growth, combined with what was thought of as their less desirable residents, made U.S. cities undesirable to many, and those who could flee to the suburbs did so.  Unlike in Europe, then, central cities in the U.S. became areas of decline and controversy by the 1960s, caused by white flight and economic shifts.  We will study cities in terms of these changes.  We will begin by examining different ways of understanding who controls urban politics.  We will then examine the institutional constraints on urban politics imposed by the federal system and the problems of financing urban government.  We will analyze the suburbanization of America and how this impacted cities and conclude by considering race and poverty in American cities.

     

    POLS 3617, American Political Economy

    Tuesdays, 4pm to 6:30pm (In Person – Hartford Campus) with Brian Waddell

    Supporting (Group IV) course in the UCS major/minor

    Please note: This course is not likely to be offered on the regional campuses next year, so if you are interested in this specific topic you are encouraged to enroll this semester if it fits your degree plan and schedule.

     

    This course is designed to offer an introduction to some central issues of current American political economy, including a look at the power major corporations exercise over politics, business-government relations, business-labor relations, the often-problematic relationship of capitalism and democracy, and the problems we as a nation face today. We begin with theoretical issues of conceptualizing the complex relations of government and economy. We will look at the problematic emergence of labor unions in the United States and how the Reagan “revolution” dramatically weakened labor and strengthened major corporations. We round out the semester by considering globalization, and then on to understanding current problems in the U.S. political economy. If you need a permission number to enroll in this course, please reach out to Prof. Brian Waddell.

     

    GEOG 3000, Race, Sex, Space, and Place

    Thursdays, 3:30pm – 6:00pm (In Person – Waterbury Campus) with Melisa Argañaraz Gomez

    Supporting (Group IV) course in the UCS major/minor

     

    This course critically examines how gender, race, sexuality, class, age, and other forms of differentiation intersect in spaces, places, boundaries, and bodies. Throughout the course, we will review critical writings of feminist geography and urban studies that question hierarchies of power (patriarchy, colonialism, capitalism, and globalization, among others). Students will begin the course by exploring how feminist urban geographers have contributed and challenge geography as a discipline. Next, the course will explore the theoretical overview of debates, conceptualizations, and constructions of gender, sexuality, and race in everyday spaces and places. We will cover work on the politics of knowledge production and methodologies; economic processes, including women’s work and labor, migration, and development, and political processes, such as (trans)nationalism and feminist geopolitics.

     

    Wishing you all the best for the spring semester!

     

    Maria Winnick

    Education Program Assistant

    Urban and Community Studies

    Prof. Bob Fisher Awarded Career Achievement Award

    UCS would like to congratulate Bob Fisher who was recently chosen as the recipient of the Association for Community Organization and Social Action (ACOSA) 2023 Career Achievement Award. Below is the article from the School of Social Works website.

    Congratulations!!

    School of Social Work Posting: Professor Bob Fisher Receives Career Achievement Award

    Posted on October 19, 2023 by Kashef, Ziba

     

    Scholarship through the CT Assoc. of Lations in Higher Ed., Inc.

    CONNECTICUT ASSOCIATION OF LATINOS IN HIGHER EDUCATION, INC. (CALAHE) is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the participation of Latinos in different areas post-secondary education in Connecticut. CALAHE offers several scholarships for latino students from Connecticut, please visit their site for additional information.

      (Please note: Scholarship postings are being provided for informational purposes only. Anyone interested in applying for a scholarship is responsible for verifying all related information. The Urban and Community Studies Program, nor the University is guaranteeing the accuracy of the information furnished in this posting.)

      Welcome to the Spring Semester

      Welcome to our new Urban and Community Studies majors and minors. We are excited to have you join our program. Please reach out to the program or your UCS faculty advisor if you are in need of any assistance. You may also find helpful information on our website urban.uconn.edu regarding degree requirements, course offerings, internship, and employment opportunities as well as information regarding the Urban Semester Program.

      We also want to welcome back our returning majors and minors. We hope you all had the opportunity to unwind and enjoy time with your friends and loved ones.

      If you are Senior planning to graduate in May, please remember that if you have not yet applied to graduate you must do so via the Universities Student Admin Webpage  Information regarding this process is available via the university’s Apply to Graduate webpage. Students are encouraged to do so asap but no later than the Registrar’s deadline to ensure that the university has sufficient time to process your request and to work out any potential issues.

      As part of the graduating process you must also submit a Final Plan of Study in the first four weeks of the semester you plan to graduate. If you run into any issues, please reach out to your UCS faculty advisor or to maria.winnick@uconn.edu.

      We wish you all the best this semester.

      Urban and Community Studies