The 615 UConn students who hail from Manchester receive an average of $8,322 in financial aid from the University, while their fellow City of Village Charm residents visited a UConn Health facility 32,540 times in the last year. Down on the shoreline, there are 330 current Huskies who call Milford home, along with some 1,938 UConn alumni. In the capital city of Hartford, there are 233 faculty and staff members, along with more than 10 times that number of alumni.
From Salisbury in the northwest corner to Stonington on the Rhode Island border, from Bridgeport to New Haven to Waterbury, up and down the I-95, I-91, and I-84 corridors, each and every one of Connecticut’s 169 cities and towns benefits from ties to UConn in ways large and small. Now, with newly updated data to reflect the latest information, Nutmeggers can see exactly how closely their towns are tied to the University, via the UConn Impact website.
“We update this site annually, and it tells a powerful story. There is not a single town in Connecticut that is not touched by this University, from cities to suburbs to our most rural corners,” UConn President Thomas Katsouleas told members of the Board of Trustees on Wednesday, Feb. 24.
The interactive map on the UConn Impact site breaks out the University’s benefits to Connecticut towns by number of current students; average financial aid from UConn and from the state of Connecticut; the number of alumni living in town; the number of faculty and staff members living in town; and the number of visits from that town to a UConn Health facility.
Together, the numbers tell a story of a state University whose identity is intricately woven into the fabric of Connecticut’s towns, a story fleshed out by links and features on the site that detail the ways in which UConn plays an important role in the daily life of the state. Here, you’ll read about a new business incubator in Stamford; a student entrepreneur from Tolland building a successful lifestyle brand; a project that will help unlock the potential of the seaweed industry in Long Island Sound; students partnering with older adults in Hartford to reduce the sting of pandemic-related isolation; and more.
The UConn Impact site also links to a hub of information about the University’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and showcases in easy-to-digest format an economic impact report released in 2020 that explores UConn’s $5.3 billion annual value to the state.
Although the wealth of data available on the UConn Impact site paints a compelling picture of the University’s value to Connecticut, as President Katsouleas points out, that value goes far beyond numbers alone:
“UConn provides social mobility for students of all ages, expertise for state and local government, a sense of pride and connectedness in our towns and cities, along with all the intangible elements that a great university brings to help lift the human spirit.”
