After 10 years of calling Syracuse University home, Imagining America, an organization focusing on civic engagement, will be moving across the country to the University of California, Davis.

The move is routine, said Bruce Burgett, chair of Imaging America National Advisory Board in an email, and has nothing to do with SU as an institution.

“Overall, we have been very happy with the partnership with SU. We think it has had many positive impacts on both side(s),” he said.

IA, which was launched at a 1999 White House conference, is a consortium of more than 100 colleges and universities across the country. SU has been the organization’s physical headquarters since 2007. IA will make the official move to UC Davis in summer 2017.

A university can remain the IA host for 5 years, a period which can be renewed at its expiration. Such a renewal occurred in 2012 when the IA board decided to remain at SU. This year, a different decision was reached, mostly because IA did not want to be associated with just one institution, Burgett said.

Timothy Eatman, the faculty co-director of IA and an associate professor at SU’s School of Education, said he agreed with Burgett’s statements on the matter, but did not elaborate.

UC Davis was chosen deliberately out of more than 100 potential hosts and the IA board unanimously endorsed this partnership, Burgett said.

“We were extremely impressed by the breadth of community engagement and public scholarship at UC Davis, and by its deep commitment to equity and inclusion,” Burgett said in the email. “We share these values of equity and inclusion, and we are excited to begin the next chapter of IA’s work with this partnership.”

UC Davis has reciprocated the enthusiasm over the move.

“The overriding goal of IA — tapping into the power of cultural disciplines to animate an emerging movement and create transformation within higher education and society — fit well with what we have been doing at UC Davis,” said Susan Kaiser, UC Davis’ interim dean of the humanities, arts and cultural studies division in the College of Letters and Science, in an email.

IA’s services will not only be afforded to UC Davis, Burgett said. The California-based university is simply the new host university.

“We very much look forward to working there as a national consortium that still includes SU,” Burgett said.

Published on September 18, 2016 at 8:05 pm

Contact James: cjwight@syr.edu