This cluster brings together faculty members from three SU science departments, two SU engineering programs, SUNY Upstate Medical University and SUNY ESF. Today, the Syracuse Biomaterials Institute (SBI) is a thriving center for interdisciplinary research, where more than 20 faculty researchers are collaborating broadly with students in a new, state-of-the-art facility designed to promote just such collaboration. SBI researchers are engaged in a wide spectrum of problems, ranging from fundamental studies of the biochemical and physical processes controlling cell functions to the development of new technologies for biomedical applications, with an emphasis on fundamental and applied studies related to medical implants spanning cardiovascular, neurological, and orthopedic systems. Biomaterials faculty have also joined SU’s Burton Blatt Institute (focused on disability research, policy, and advocacy), on grants, such as a recently funded NSF grant on disabilities and rheumatoid arthritis.
This cluster includes faculty from the College of Law, Maxwell School, and Newhouse School and brings together the disciplines of global affairs, national security and counter-terrorism, conflict resolution, and public diplomacy, along with the interplay among the judiciary, politics, and the media. The cluster’s interdisciplinary work address issues at the global, national, and local levels, and has engaged the humanities as a lens for analyzing human conflict, citizenship and governance, and tools of, diplomacy, reconciliation and justice-making.
Interdisciplinary centers and projects at the core of the cluster include: the Moynihan Institute; the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration (PARCC); the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism (INSCT); the Institute for the Study of the Judiciary, Politics, and the Media (IJPM); the Religion, the Media, and International Relations project; the Transnational NGO Initiative; the Perpetual Peace Project; and the Cold Case Justice Initiative. In addition, a new dual-degree, signature master’s program on Public Diplomacy was initiated, drawing students and scholars to consider the role of social institutions, from religion to the media, and non-governmental civil society organizations in bringing citizens and states together; they already have launched a new journal, Exchange: The Journal of Public Diplomacy.
The School of Architecture (SOA) and the College of Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) lead this innovative cluster. It includes eight SU schools and colleges and focuses on art and design, technology, and sustainability and how the disciplines can help address the national challenges of transforming older industrial cities, such as Syracuse. It includes a newly-created design institute and also a collaborative design laboratory, and all four of VPA’s core design programs – all of which are located in a renovated warehouse in downtown Syracuse. A new interdisciplinary, professional Master of Fine Arts in Collaborative Design, is engaging colleagues from SOA and VPA as well as the iSchool and Whitman School to create a new generation of leaders in interdisciplinary design, technology, and innovation.
Through the Near Westside Initiative, a long-neglected neighborhood is coming alive as architects, engineers, geographers, technologists, entrepreneurs, artists and designers collaborate with industry, government, non-profits and residents. Teams like this also are creating the Connective Corridor, a signature strip of cutting-edge cultural development connecting the University Hill with downtown Syracuse, experimenting with new materials for the sidewalks, devising sustainable storm-water management systems, and designing energy-saving lighting and historically informative signage. VPA faculty created the Urban Video Project on the Corridor with enormous video installations; SU’s Light Work gallery and the Everson Museum have recruited renowned artists to contribute programming. The Maxwell School’s Community Geographer is mapping key aspects of geography and demography in the areas adjoining the Corridor, and scholars from VPA’s Public Memory Project and the College of Arts and Sciences, iSchool, the Maxwell School, and the Newhouse School are cultivating awareness of history along the Corridor, including neighborhoods destroyed by urban renewal in the 1960s.
This cluster builds on Syracuse’s long history of national and international leadership in the field of disabilities and special education. It draws on the substantial strengths of the College of Law, the School of Education, the Maxwell School, the College of Human Ecology, the Taishoff Center on Inclusive Higher Education; the Burton Blatt Institute, the Center on Human Policy. Law and Disability Studies, and the Disability Law and Policy Program which houses the College of Law's Disability Rights Clinic. The core focus areas of this cluster are employment, entrepreneurship, economic empowerment, community living and participation, civil rights, and international and comparative human rights and disability law. Initiatives include training and assistance in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, analysis of court decisions and legal representation, international and domestic law and policy development, development of employment and placement models, and tax policy. Connected to this cluster is the nationally recognized Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities, led by the Whitman School of Management
This cluster was built on the core strengths of the nationally-recognized of the Whitman School of Management and sparked by a multi-million dollar grant from the Kauffman Foundation, which resulted in the creation of the entrepreneurship-based program Enitiative. It cultivates students across six SU schools and colleges—Whitman, the iSchool, VPA, Newhouse, Law, and the Falk College—and has supported projects on small-business development, university-corporate collaboration in academic entrepreneurship, inclusive entrepreneurship for those with disabilities, and student start-up ventures. It has led to the integration of entrepreneurship into more than 200 SU courses taken by nearly 6,000 students and the creation of a student business incubator – housed at the Syracuse Tech Garden. Cross-fertilization of SU’s research investments is exemplified by this cluster’s integration with the nationally recognized Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities, led by the Whitman School of Management and the University’s South Side Innovation Center.
Headquartered at the Syracuse Center of Excellence, this cluster focuses on indoor environmental quality, renewable energy, and water resources. It includes 12 academic partner institutions and 200+ corporate partners and the cluster’s impact has included research and development, technology transfer, modeling more healthy buildings, and revitalizing inner-city neighborhoods through sustainability. This effort won the national 2010 Leadership Award from the U.S. Green Building Council. Most recently it led to creation of the New York Energy Regional Innovation Cluster, which includes New York City academic institutions, economic development consortia in Central New York and New York City. This effort is leveraging upstate research/development and manufacturing infrastructure and the deployment of new energy-efficient building systems technologies in New York City.
This cluster focuses on the national and global challenges presented by the aging of the population. It draws strength from the all-university Aging Studies Institute, which coordinates and promotes aging-related research, training, and outreach at Syracuse University. This collaborative initiative of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and the David B. Falk School of Sport and Human Dynamics involves over 30 faculty affiliates from various units across campus. Projects funded via this cluster already have seen significant results, including the establishment of a Center for Aging and Policy Studies through a grant from the National Institute on Aging – one of just 14 centers nationally. Recently, SU’s Center for Health and Behavior was designated as all-University Center, and we have launched the Central New York Master of Public Health with SUNY Upstate Medical University– a new multi-disciplinary advanced degree program to prepare the diverse, next generation of public and community health professionals. This integration of cutting-edge research, advocacy, and education, with very real community impact, exemplifies Scholarship in Action.
Leveraging expertise in the iSchool, the L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science, and the Whitman School of Management, this cluster builds upon SU’s high-impact collaboration with JPMorgan Chase, which has committed more than $30 million over 10 years to the deep, broad, and long-term relationship and created the on-campus JPMorgan Chase Technology Center. The cluster’s work focus on areas such as: workforce collaboration in a distributed environment, pattern matching algorithms to improve fraud detection, risk mitigation for employee identity, IT application access management, data center capacity management, and cybersecurity. The Center is a hub of collective creativity where, together, SU and JPMorgan technologists are transforming the way technologists are trained and educated by building a best-in-class interdisciplinary and experiential learning curriculum for global enterprise technology; conducting applied technology research in areas of joint interest and opportunity; and fostering knowledge sharing with other universities, industry partners and the community to extend benefits to a wider audience. The cluster’s impact is augmented by the NY state-funded Center for Advanced Systems and Engineering (CASE). CASE supports university-industry collaboration to accelerate the economic impact of information-related research in many areas critical to enterprise technology, from predictive analysis, to managing and interpreting massive data sets, to cyber-security. The hallmark of the venture is joint effort, with all elements of the partnership conducted collaboratively among professionals from multiple disciplines and directed by shared governance.
This bold interdisciplinary cluster is rooted in SU’s tremendous history of interdisciplinary scholarship and activism in the area of inclusive urban education. Growing out of the Partnership for Better Education consortium, it is centered in the School of Education and conducted in close partnership with the Syracuse City School District. In 2007, Syracuse was selected as the first city-wide application of the evidence-based Say Yes to Education Foundation model. Today, Say Yes to Education: Syracuse serves as the hub of this cluster and the initiative is being implemented across the entire school district. It includes comprehensive academic, socio-emotional, health, and legal supports in every school. Most critically, the program offers the opportunity for free tuition at SU or more than 100 other colleges and universities to all 18,000 students in Syracuse City Schools. This cluster has become an extraordinary research and scholarship laboratory for faculty and students from across the University – from economists of education in the Maxwell School, to journalists in the Newhouse School, to iSchool and College of Engineering and Computer Science faculty working on STEM curriculum and artists and poets teaching literacy through the arts.
The SU Physics Department has had a leadership position in national and international collaborations since the early 1950s. Today, its accomplished faculty (10 of 18 senior faculty are Fellows of the American Physical Society) includes leaders of large-scale collaborations involving other universities, agencies, and foreign governments, spanning high-energy physics, gravity physics, and condensed matter and material physics. For example, members of the high-energy physics group have been designated to lead the largest American effort at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland and members of the gravity physics group play a leading role in the international LIGO (laser interferometric gravitational observation) effort. Fueling this excellence have been hires of 12 new faculty members over the past seven years, driving the department’s Scholarship in Action through fundamental research with international prominence, broad collaboration, and high impact.
This cluster recognizes that increasingly, scholars in the humanities, humanistic social sciences, and the arts, areas of traditional strength at Syracuse, are joining together, both across disciplines and inter-institutionally, in highly creative and productive publicly-engaged scholarship. Faculty scholarship in the cluster has grown substantially during the past seven years, as the University renovated the historically-significant Tolley Building. The Tolley Humanities Building is now home to six interdisciplinary humanities programs, along with the newly created Syracuse Humanities Center, home to the Mellon-funded CNY Humanities Corridor collaboration with Cornell and Rochester, and the 84-institution consortium, Imagining America, which in 2007 moved from Michigan to be hosted at Syracuse. The CNY Humanities Corridor has supported more than 60 collaborative projects from sub-clusters as diverse as Cultures and Religions and Musicology/Music History. Two collaborative Chancellor’s Leadership Projects, Transnationalizing LGBT Studies and Democratizing Knowledge, are challenging public understandings of difference, identity, and equality in global and local contexts. And Imagining America’s Tenure Team Initiative has spurred dialogue nationally on evaluating excellence in public scholarship in the context of tenure and promotion.
