SUNY Albany + Cultural Blur

The De Center

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The De Center ➪

The DeCenter embraces cross-disciplinary collaboration as a charged universe of potential.

Culture, industry, and even our day-to-day experiences
are blurring and converging, as our relationships with technology, the world, and each other change more quickly and profoundly than they have since the last Industrial Revolution. And SUNY Albany can be a leader in making sense of and thriving in this blurry and uncertain era, with the help of the DeCenter, an academic gathering place that challenges traditional academic siloes.

SUNY ALBANY | the DE CENTER

What if large university doing some of the most cutting edge research in the world on everything from AI, to climate science, to poetry and photography had a place that could connect all of these fields?

what if…

that place could offer students unique learning opportunities, academics otherwise inaccessible perspectives, and the university itself greater standing in the academic world?

Background

The DeCenter (formerly CHATS (The Center for Humanities Arts and Technosciences)) was formed in 2003, as humanities and arts disciplines struggled to prove their relevance amid a professional and academic landscape with a heavy emphasis on STEM fields. The DeCenter’s original mandate was to elevate the role of the humanities at SUNY Albany by offering a connecting point between STEM and humanities disciplines.

Challenge

As CHATS, the DeCenter has maintained a presence at the university for nearly twenty years, but in that time, that presence has become diluted and unfocused. Years of good work has gone dramatically under documented. And the ambitious CHATS mission to pursue deep intellectual exchange has been limited by the lack of a clear strategy, identity, and unifying message to the university community and leadership.

Meanwhile, the academic discourse has shifted. Universities, students, and employers are reconsidering and reimagining the role of higher education. And a preference for STEM has shifted to more well-rounded pursuit of STEA(rt)M disciplines, in a moment of accelerated cultural and industrial blurring and convergence.

Opportunity

The DeCenter is experiencing a new wave of opportunity from university leadership. To make the most of this refreshed interest, they needed a powerful and focused brand strategy to reposition this academic center at SUNY Albany for a cultural and academic landscape significantly different from the time of its founding. With greater support, the DeCenter has the potential to be a truly unique force at U. Albany, helping to contribute to greater, more responsible, more deeply understood human flourishing.

The DeCenter has the opportunity to boost financial support from university leadership, as well as to build a broad support network of allies and collaborators across departments and in the broader community. In order to do this, the rebranding strategy focuses on revealing the possibility of shared ambitions, continuous dialogue, and as-yet unasked questions among university disciplines.

Ultimately, this is the beginning of a long and exciting conversation for this academic center on its way to becoming a true center of gravity for new ways of thinking and working across scholarship, art, technologies, and sciences. And this moment is their chance to make that conversation as exciting as it deserves to be.