Rising to the Challenges

New initiative to focus collective Sun Devil energy to solve the world’s toughest problems

By Sarah Auffret

What keeps you awake at night? Is it the gloom hovering over the economy, or your child’s difficulty learning in a classroom with a new teacher? Maybe it’s worry over soaring energy costs and global warming, or the eerie prospect of terrorism. It could be the specter of a hungry child’s face, seen on the nightly news, or concern over your own health.

Whatever the challenges that rile your sleep, ASU is probably working on a solution. As one of the top 20 universities without a medical school in research expenditures, ASU has researchers who are examining many of the world’s most intractable problems.

There’s been only one problem with this situation — people outside the university who could champion these research projects are not aware that the work is being done.

“There’s lots of work being done at ASU, but universities are fragmented, and it’s hard for people to understand these often-esoteric research topics,” says Terri Shafer, associate vice president for marketing and strategic communication. “Important research is buried under layers of ‘academic-speak,’ so it’s not easy for people outside ASU to readily understand what we are doing, and to engage in areas that they think matter.”

To rectify this problem, ASU is unveiling the Challenges Project, an ambitious initiative that aims to identify the most pressing local and global issues we face as world citizens, determine the crucial work being done at the university on each one, and invite everyone—alumni, students, faculty, staff, the public—to help the university tackle them head-on. It’s a way of magnifying the impact of the university, by asking people to pitch in and work on issues that concern them the most.

Hunger, disease, improving education, alternative energy, the local economy, sustainability, teaching peace, strengthening families—all are challenges that have been suggested at the project’s Web site, www.asuchallenges.com. ASU hopes alumni and others will go to the site between now and May to identify the issues they’re passionate about. Later this year, they will be able to return to the site to volunteer to provide expertise, serve on a panel, work on a team, donate resources, or serve as an advocate for problems identified and selected to be part of the initiative with the public.

“Most people don’t have any understanding of what they, as individuals, can do right now,” says Shafer, a member of the project’s steering committee. “The Challenges Project establishes big goals, bringing resources together to reach the goals. We can take discrete pockets of research and combine them, and we can address all the problems and issues that need to be addressed, to get research to market in a shorter time frame. If people know what we’re working on, then an interested individual, company or government entity might see something they’re doing that could advance the goal.”

The ASU Foundation is partnering with the university in this idea-driven campaign, and Foundation President and CEO Johnnie Ray says that the Challenges Project, which posits that a public university can be a key player in solving the world’s most pressing problems “literally opens up the horizon.”

“This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to re-invent American higher education,” Ray asserted. “Our prestigious national universities are just not playing the right game anymore. We need a new compact. We need a new idea – and we have it right here in a New American University. Investing in the ASU challenges will help institutionalize this vision and spread it across the American higher education landscape, not merely for the glory of ASU, but for the common good of our region, nation and world.”

The project sprang to life after Bruce Mau, a visionary designer and founder of the Center for Massive Change, was asked to bring clarity to the New American University concept more than a year ago. His philosophy is in tune with President Michael Crow’s, in that he sees ASU as major catalyst for social change, a university that can work at the local level to find real-world solutions to global problems.

He believes the Challenges Project will allow ASU students to tap into the issues that concern them the most, becoming self-directed learners and entrepreneurs, able to explore problems across disciplines and boundaries.

“It is serendipitous for ASU to unveil its commitment to take on the greatest challenges of the 21st century, at a time when America itself is demanding and instigating change as never seen before,” says Mau, who has also worked with clients as diverse as Dell, MTV, Nokia, the Museum of Modern Art and the Seattle Public Library.

“ASU is refocusing the core responsibility of the American university as the service of the public good—an obligation that has largely been lost in the landscape of higher education. The issues that ASU is working on are very real and urgent. Education, energy, local business, community and sustainability are the topics that captured so much attention during the recent presidential election, and it is exciting to see that these are the same issues that ASU has been focusing on.”

ASU’s size is a distinct advantage in this effort, in that an institution with 67,000 students and more than 15,000 employees has the critical mass to enact massive change. The university’s location is also key – for the purposes of resolving thorny global issues, it’s a benefit that ASU is situated in a rapidly growing urban area facing sustainability-related challenges.

Deans of the ASU colleges and schools were asked last fall to list the grand challenges in their fields that are currently being addressed by faculty or in their plans for the future. As the project progresses, faculty members will be able to see what others are doing that may complement their research and students will be able to submit ideas and offer to work on solutions.

The initial five challenges, identified by a core set of university donors at an ASU retreat last fall, were unveiled March 3 at ASU Founders Day and on asuchallenges.com. Throughout the year, the foundation will work with the university and the public to identify additional challenges, which will be revealed at ASU’s Homecoming celebration in November 2009.

Alumni who know about the Challenges Project believe it’s a natural fit for ASU.

Courtney Klein ’05 B.I.S. started a non-profit organization, New Global Citizens, while she was still a senior at ASU, to mobilize high school students to help solve the world’s problems by partnering with grassroots organizations. Klein was one of the first recipients of a grant from the Edson Student Entrepreneur Initiative. She has since grown the organization to 11 full-time employees with offices in Phoenix and San Francisco. Thousands of high school students across the country work on projects around the world.

Klein feels that the Challenges Project will enhance the problem-solving synergy present at ASU that she experienced as an undergraduate.

“The breadth and depth of expertise at ASU, and the way they’ve been able to connect me with people and mentor me, have been phenomenal. ASU inspires young people to dream and to think and to believe that it’s possible to create whatever it is they’re looking to create. I can’t tell you how powerful that’s been,” she said.

Steve Evans ’67 B.S., ’68 M.B.A., president of Evans Realty Associates, says that because the Phoenix area is one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the world, it’s possible for ASU to have a huge impact by making small changes.

“ASU has made enormous progress since I was a student in the 1960s,” he says. “The major difference between then and now is its impact on the community and its environment. I see the university as a prime driver for positive change here, and I think that’s what attracts faculty and staff to the university, because their efforts really have a huge payoff.”

Mau asserts that the project is so ambitious that it will need the active support and commitment from students, faculty, parents, alumni and the larger local population to succeed.

“Our hope is that alumni will become not just supporters, but active participants in this ambition—able to play a hands-on role to define the issues and to follow through by bringing about meaningful change,” he says. “The ASU community has the opportunity to be mobilized towards a united vision. I believe that we will see that community grow drastically as we work together on these and timely goals.”

Ray was confident about the initiative’s chances of success.

“People want to be a part of the solution; and that’s basically what the challenges campaign is all about,” he said. “When stakeholders see the direct connection to what ASU is accomplishing today and every day, they immediately understand that their support of ASU is not about boosting departmental rankings or producing Ivory Tower theories but about helping ASU achieve real-world successes.”