MISSION
In October 2007, Trinity unveiled an ambitious initiative to integrate its well-established tradition of community engagement with its strong global programs, with the goal of creating a new academic identity that will distinguish Trinity among the top-tier liberal arts colleges in the United States. This new initiative is the result of extensive discussion, planning, and self-studies among Trinity’s board of trustees, senior leadership, faculty committees, and students. It constitutes one of Trinity’s top strategic priorities and reflects a broad consensus for achieving an integrated urban-global studies mission. At the core of this mission lies the Trinity Triangle of synergistic linkages among the College’s academic programs on campus, its experiential and service learning in the city of Hartford, and its extended educational opportunities in the world.
Since its founding in 1823, Trinity has offered an excellent classical liberal arts education to generations of students in its historic classroom buildings, with relatively little engagement with the outside world. Recent decades have witnessed dramatic changes in the world around the Trinity campus and far beyond. The city of Hartford, once a strong manufacturing center with a largely homogeneous population, has become an economically challenged city with considerable racial and ethnic diversity and economic inequality. The larger world beyond Hartford and Trinity has been urbanizing and globalizing rapidly, exerting growing economic and cultural influences on the College and challenging its traditional liberal arts education. As a strategic response, Trinity sees its integrated urban-global initiative as creating a new educational environment that extends classroom learning into Hartford and into cities around the world, bringing both the academic knowledge and practical experience back into the classroom to spur the intellectual growth and leadership of Trinity students.
To realize Trinity’s new urban-global vision, the College created the Center for Urban and Global Studies (CUGS) in 2007, supported by a Mellon Foundation grant. CUGS is first center at an American liberal arts college to bear an integrated urban-global name and focus. Taking advantage of Trinity’s location, CUGS will strengthen the long-standing mutually beneficial relationship between the College and Hartford. Playing off Trinity’s global reach, CUGS will improve existing and develop new learning and research opportunities in world cities. Essentially, CUGS aims to create synergistic linkages among teaching, research, and service in urban and global studies, broadly defined, between Trinity’s academic programs and its various forms of experiential learning on campus, in Greater Hartford, and across the globe.
Background and Rationale