Artist Statement
The logo is a graphic abstraction of the Association for Undergraduate Education at Research Universities’ stated mission and purpose. The shape of the icon is designed to be dynamic and to suggest multiple interpretations symbolically. At its most basic level, it represents collaborative innovation and the constantly changing quality of shared efforts to better students’ educational experiences and future opportunities. The larger black shape will, for some, represent a mortarboard and graduation. For others, the larger black shape will represent an institution that advances undergraduate education through internal networks that combine stability and movement. In this vision, the smaller squares and circles within the square symbolize different departments and people that create and implement ideas that move “outside of the box” to improve undergraduate education. Others will see the larger square as representing UERU. In this interpretation, the smaller squares and circles – and the lines that connect them – represent member institutions networking to create and share ideas both within and outside UERU.
What is common to all these interpretations is the logo’s symbolic representation of reinvention through the energetic movement of the lines and shapes.