Hartwick College names first director of its Griffiths Center for Collaboration and Innovation

ONEONTA, N.Y. — The Griffiths Center for Collaboration and Innovation (GCCI) at Hartwick College in Oneonta has its first director: Patricia (Patti) Delaney.

Delaney’s appointment with the GCCI begins in mid-August, Hartwick College President Margaret Drugovich announced.

A social anthropologist, Delaney has experience in program development and evaluation “both within and beyond” higher education, in the U.S. and internationally, Hartwick said. She joins Hartwick from St. Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont, where most recently she served as the inaugural director of its public health program. Besides her role as an associate professor of anthropology at the college, Delaney has also served as special assistant to the VP of academic affairs for international projects since last fall.

Launched in 2018 with a $1.25 million gift from Sally Griffiths Herbert, a 1988 graduate of Hartwick College, and Tim Herbert, the GCCI is an idea incubator and an “instigator of innovative approaches and creative problem solving,” Hartwick contends.

The center serves as an umbrella for three “innovation stations:” the Makerspace, Fabrication Lab (Fab Lab), and entrepreneurship hub (E-Hub), where “ideas, theory, and practice will support entrepreneurial models of thought and action across the curriculum.”

As GCCI director, Delaney will also be a member of Hartwick’s strategic leadership team, and lead a cross-campus advisory committee to implement the development and delivery of programming that supports creativity and innovation, the college said.