welcome to the urban studies program

The Urban Studies Program, in the Geography Department at Southern Connecticut State University, is dedicated to providing a high caliber of education to advance knowledge through study, practice, and research. This is consistent with the university's commitment to scholarship and professional preparation, and to the engagement of the local community in an increasingly globalized and urbanized world. We have a strong and growing graduate program and a minor at the undergraduate level.

The Urban Studies Program aims to equip students with the tools and techniques of appropriate urban policy and planning, which are culturally relevant, embracing community-level collaboration and positive responses to cultural group conflict in differentiated cities. The approach of the program provides participants with a systematic, critical overview of contested ideas, concepts, principles, and practices which are relevant to the understanding and promotion of co-existence and social justice in an increasingly diverse urban context. The Urban Studies Program is multi-disciplinary in nature, drawing on numerous bodies of knowledge and academic departments. The program is designed to enable students to evaluate and integrate knowledge, skills, values, and ethics, and to impart tools for scholarship, critical thinking, and leadership, emanating from the educational process and experience at Southern Connecticut State University.