EXCELLENCE
Jan. 29, 2007 - ASU Insight
ASU welcomes new Regents' Professors
Four exceptional professors have been named to the university's most prestigious ranks as ASU Regents' Professors for 2007. The selection was ratified Jan. 23 by the Arizona Board of Regents.
The honorees are:
• Laurie Chassin, professor of psychology.
• Robert Denhardt, director of the School of Public Affairs.
• Subhash Mahajan, director of the School of Materials.
• Richard Rogerson, Rondthaler chair of economics.
Regents' Professors stand out for their accomplishments in many areas, including excellence in teaching, exceptional achievements in research or other creative activities, and national and international distinction in their fields. They serve as advisers to the university president and take on a broader role as consultants and teachers throughout the university.
"The four individuals chosen this year to be Regents' Professors exemplify the university's ideal for professors,” says Elizabeth D. Capaldi, ASU's executive vice president and university provost. “They are superb scholars, excellent teachers, and university and discipline citizens who build programs and work with students while changing the world through their own research. We are very happy they are here, and that we can recognize their achievements."
Nominations for Regents' Professorships are made by faculty members and are submitted to a nominating committee in the fall. The prestigious honor includes an increase of $5,000 to the faculty member's base salary, as well as an annual grant of $5,000 to support their scholarly endeavors.
Below is a brief description of the honorees' accomplishments:
Chassin's research in child clinical psychology has earned her a multitude of leadership positions in the field, as well as continuous funding from the National Institute of Health. As a principal investigator of a prevention-training grant and author of more than 140 publications, Chassin has been a leader in developing and conducting longitudinal studies of children and families at risk for substance abuse and associated mental health disorders.
Denhardt, an author of 17 books and more than 60 journal articles, has earned national acclaim for his research and developments in organizational studies. He is a winner of the American Society of Public Administration's lifetime achievement award, and he has produced research in phenomenology and critical theory that helped redefine the field of public administration.
Mahajan, a leader in electronic materials, has been recognized for his international contributions to materials science. His extensive publishing career as editor of a leading journal in the field and an author of an undergraduate textbook, coupled with his pioneering work on semiconductors, led to his being elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2005.
Rogerson's macroeconomic research and well-published work have made him a leading expert in labor economics and an important consultant to four Federal Reserve banks. His transformative papers on such issues as labor supply have appeared in the renowned economic journals Review of Economic Dynamics and the American Economic Review , for which he serves as co-editor.
Return to Excellence
Jan. 12, 2007 - The Business Journal
Winning ways: ASU athletic director works to bring respect to programs
In less than two years on the job, Lisa Love has put her stamp on Arizona State University's athletic program, hiring two high-profile coaches in Herb Sendek and Dennis Erickson to replace the ones she fired, Rob Evans and Dirk Koetter.
Whether that stamp turns to gold or shrivels in the Arizona sun remains to be seen.
But if history is any indicator of the future, Michael Crow will be happy with his decision to lure Love from the University of Southern California.
As a coach there, she led the women's volleyball squad to a 205-93 record, nine NCAA tournament appearances and eight finishes in the national Top 15.
She also was named the Pac-10's co-coach of the year in 1997.
"She has already enhanced the athletics program at ASU in significant ways by hiring great coaches, improving the marketing effort and beginning the task of upgrading our athletic facilities," Crow says.
"Of equal importance, she also has improved the academic performance of our student athletes," he says.
When Love became ASU's 21st athletic director in July 2005 -- only the sixth woman to hold the title at a Division I school with a football program -- she talked of bringing men's national basketball and football titles to ASU. Both programs have been mired in mediocrity for more than a decade.
Despite reaching four bowl games in the past six years, Koetter's Devils went 2-19 against nationally ranked teams and failed to win a game in California during that span.
On the basketball front, the Devils have appeared in the NCAA tournament just twice since 1995.
But Love said she doesn't feel pressured to win games.
"It's less about pressure. It's more about the drive and the passion," she says from her sixth floor office overlooking the football field at Sun Devil Stadium. "The pressure is making the dollars and cents work."
Since taking over the top athletic job, she has balanced the budget, but would like to see it hit the $50 million mark to compete against other PAC 10 schools.
Sports always have held a special place for Love, whose mother was a master bridge player and whose father was a University of Denver quarterback and tennis player.
Growing up in northeastern Texas, Love fondly remembers running pass patterns in the yard as her father called plays for his daughters.
"I always knew I wanted to coach," she says is her soft Arlington, Texas, accent. "I love athletics. I love competition."
Mike Gallagher, of the Phoenix law firm Gallagher & Kennedy, chaired the Sun Angel Foundation during the search for a new athletic director after Gene Smith left for the same position at The Ohio State University.
"Her enthusiasm and knowledge about on-field performance is exceptional because she has a coaching background," Gallagher says. "She going to be a great long-term addition."
Return to Excellence
Jan. 11, 2007 - The Business Journal
Science of the Future Symposium to launch new ASU school
Arizona State University is helping launch its new School of Materials with a Science of the Future Symposium Jan. 19.
Cutting-edge materials research from students and faculty will be on display at the Tempe campus. In the new school, materials engineers are joined on the faculty by physicists, chemists and other researchers. The goal is to create the most advanced materials of tomorrow, for use in everything from electronics to homes.
The new school is a joint effort between the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering.
Return to Excellence
Jan. 11, 2007 - The Business Journal
ASU climbs in rankings with record number of National Merit Scholars
Arizona State University has risen again in the national rankings for freshman National Merit Scholars, attracting a higher number of these bright students than almost any other public university in the United States, according to a newly released report.
With a record 188 National Merit Scholars in this year's freshman class, ASU ranks third among public universities and eighth among all schools -- ahead of Yale, Princeton and Stanford. The ASU student body includes 606 National Merit Scholars overall.
National Merit Scholars score in the top one-half of 1 percent of all students who take the Preliminary SAT midway through high school. They must continue to show a consistent record of high academic performance in ninth through 12th grade, be recommended by their principals and complete a lengthy application.
For the past seven years, ASU has placed among the top 20 universities in the country. Fifteen years ago, ASU enrolled only six freshman National Merit Scholars.
The annual report by the National Merit Scholarship Corp. listed 387 public and private institutions that enrolled 8,319 scholars this year. The top 10 are Harvard, with 294 National Merit students; University of Florida, 257; University of Texas at Austin, 250; Washington University in St. Louis, 241; University of Southern California, 206; Northwestern, 198; University of Chicago, 196; ASU, 188; Yale, 186; Princeton and Stanford, 153.
"The quality of our faculty and degree programs continues to attract the best students from Arizona and across the country," said James Rund, vice president for university undergraduate initiatives. "Barrett, the Honors College at ASU has become nationally known as the home for these students. This community of students is beginning to define our student body at large, and we could not be more pleased."
Mark Jacobs, Barrett dean, said the effect of having 606 National Merit Scholars is felt across the ASU campuses, since the students are also enrolled in all the other colleges.
"These wonderful students enrich classroom discussions and contribute to the rising culture of intense intellectual engagement on campus," Jacobs said.
Return to Excellence
Jan. 3, 2007 - The Arizona Republic
ASU making strides in real estate
When Robert Mittelstaedt took the helm of Arizona State University's business school in mid-2004, he heard often from community leaders and alumni about what the school needed.
The discussions and signs around him pointed to the importance of real estate in the Arizona economy.
ASU had "been teaching real estate courses for some time, but not as a major or concentration," he said. By the end of 2004, the W.P. Carey School of Business started developing a real estate master's degree and started raising money to attract a top real estate scholar.
The school now offers an MBA with a real estate concentration and a doctorate in business administration/real estate finance. And this month, a top scholar of real estate finance will begin teaching.
ASU joins several schools, including the Haas School of Business at the University of California-Berkeley and the University of Cincinnati, that offer MBAs with concentrations in real estate.
"It is a big part of the national economy and we have one of the hottest 'laboratories' to look at the operation of a market right in our backyard," Mittelstaedt said.
He hopes to make ASU a standout in real estate.
"There are a number of business schools that offer real estate courses, but only a few that do it really well," he said. "Many (schools) view it as a subset of finance or view it as a specialty area that doesn't have a large enough following. . . . For those of us who can attract students nationally and regionally and have a hot real estate market in a place that many of our graduates want to stay, then having a real estate concentration makes a lot of sense."
To get the program started right, the business school's recruiting committee spoke to "almost every top academic in the field last winter and spring," he said. Over the summer, ASU announced it had selected real estate finance author and educator Crocker Liu to become founding director of the new MBA program.
Mittelstaedt points out that Liu is "the most published academic in the area of real estate investment finance."
Liu, who was unavailable for comment, was an associate professor of finance and real estate at New York University's Stern School of Business before moving to Arizona this past summer.
Liu and his wife are from Hawaii; proximity to family was a factor in the move, Mittelstaedt said.
"But the real issue," he said, "was that he was looking for a school that saw real estate as a high priority and an important part of an overall strategy to be world class, which we do."
ASU landed a McCord Chair, which allowed the school to recruit Liu. The McCord Chair was financed by a $2 million gift to the W.P. Carey School from Phoenix residents Robert and Sharon McCord.
"And we have some planning money from another donor specifically targeted to getting real estate moving at ASU," he said.
With Liu on board, ASU is talking with other experts and hopes to add another faculty member to the team.
Statistics on students declaring real estate as their MBA concentration were not available.
Mittelstaedt noted that in the fall when he met with the newest MBA class, the first to get a crack at the new concentration, about two-thirds were interested in the real estate classes.
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ACCESS
Jan. 24, 2007 - ASU Insight
Scholarship program strengthens ties down under
The Australia New Zealand America Chamber of Commerce (ANZACC) will offer scholarships to study abroad through the Global Futures Initiative of ASU's Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering.
ANZACC president John Andrews says the scholarship program advances the organization's goal to "promote trade, investment and economic relations between Australia, New Zealand and the United States, with a particular emphasis on Arizona, which has enjoyed much success as an exporter of high-tech products into the world market."
The Global Futures Initiative seeks to increase the number of Fulton School of Engineering students involved in high-technology education, service and leadership development from an international perspective, says Richard D. Filley, director of the Global Futures program.
"Global engagement is extremely important to the mission of the Fulton School of Engineering and ASU," Filley says. "This is the first scholarship program ever offered by the Fulton School that focuses solely on sending our students abroad. It will allow more of our students to study overseas, as well as bring top students from Australia and New Zealand to ASU."
Modeled after the successful "USA to Australia" scholarship program of the American Australian Association, it will offer the following annual awards:
• $1,000 plus a free round-trip plane ticket for a student in the Fulton School of Engineering to study for a semester at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia.
• $1,000 plus a free round-trip plane ticket for a student in the Fulton School of Engineering to study for a semester at The University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand.
• $1,000 and a free round-trip plane ticket for a student in an engineering or computer science program at the Queensland University of Technology to study for a semester at ASU.
• $1,000 and a free round-trip plane ticket for a student in an engineering or computer science program at The University of Waikato to study for a semester at ASU.
Awards will be limited to ASU students with U.S. citizenship, enrolled with regular standing as a junior or higher in a degree program of the Fulton School of Engineering.
Participating students at the Queensland University of Technology must be Australian citizens enrolled at year-three level or higher with regular status in an engineering or computer science degree program.
Participating students at the University of Waikato must be New Zealand citizens enrolled at year-three level or higher, with regular status in an engineering or computer science degree program.
Students will be selected on a competitive basis. Applications are due by Jan. 31. Selections are scheduled to be made by Feb. 15.
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Jan. 19, 2007 - The Business Journal
ASU, Jobing.com team on MBA program
Jobing.com has selected Arizona State University's W.P. Carey School of Business to deliver a 22-month Masters of Business Administration degree program for company employees.
According to an announcement Friday from the school, the program begins this month and will allow Jobing.com employees to continue a regular work schedule while earning their MBAs. Thirty-four employees have been accepted into the program's first class -- one third from the Phoenix area, where Jobing.com is based, and the rest from locations around the U.S.
Courses will be delivered by a combination of synchronous and asynchronous online courses and four on-campus sessions. Students attending from outside the Phoenix area will participate in sessions streamed in real time with the aid of webcams and microphone headsets.
"We've taken our online MBA program and customized it for Jobing.com in a way that fits their company culture," said Andy Atzert, managing director for custom MBA programs at the Carey school. "We wanted students from various Jobing.com locations across the country to develop a real learning community, so to facilitate that, we've included weekly synchronous sessions and residential sessions on campus.
Jobing.com, founded in 2000 by human resources executive Aaron Matos, is a Web site that focuses on connecting local employers and job seekers. The company has about 300 employees in 17 states.
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Jan. 19, 2007 - The Arizona Republic
Elementary students get taste of college
Hundreds of Valley students got to play hooky from elementary school Thursday to watch Arizona State University's women's basketball team play UCLA and get a taste of college life.
The game was the first meeting of ASU and UCLA since the Sun Devils lost to the Bruins in the semifinals of last year's Pac-10 tournament. ASU won by 40 points.
The game was purposely scheduled for 11 a.m. to allow students to attend.
Access ASU, an initiative that partners with local school districts to expose grade school students to higher education as early as possible, hosted the game called "Sparky's Kids to College Field Trip."
The trip was intended to teach students that pursuing higher education can be fun and beneficial.
"Going to college is going to help me learn how to be a doctor, so I can help people in the Army with injuries," said Reina Ramos, a sixth-grader at Pueblo del Sol Middle School in Phoenix. "And seeing the Sun Devils play is good and nice."
Some students who attended the game received a workbook that turned the game into a lesson. The workbooks featured math, geography, English and science.
But in addition to being educational, the game was lots of fun.
The kids traded school lunch for the concession stands, did "the wave" and viewed a brief game among mascots including ASU's Sparky, the Phoenix Mercury's Scorch, and Ronald McDonald.
Several got a chance to shoot a few baskets to compete for prizes, and others got their faces painted.
Kimberlee Turberville, whose son, Preston, is a sixth-grader at Sun Valley Elementary in Peoria, said while the event was fun, it was also a lesson in public behavior.
"Coming here teaches them how to be respectful and behave appropriately in public and to take their education seriously," she said. "It's very important to expose them to higher education as early as possible."
Following the game, the Sun Devils and cheerleaders gathered to thank the students for coming and encouraged them to excel academically.
"Study hard and read your books," Kirsten Thompson, a sophomore center for ASU, told the kids.
Teachers said the visit to one of the most populated college campuses in the country definitely sparked students' interest in post-secondary education.
Many students were asking questions that they would have never asked, having never been on a college campus before, said Eric Brooks, a fifth-grade teacher at Galveston Elementary in Chandler.
"College is kind of an abstract idea for a fifth-grader without actually seeing it up close," he said.
Mesa sixth-grader Kylee Clark doesn't know what she wants to study in college yet, but she knows she wants to go.
"It's fun being here cheering for the team. And this seems like a great school to go to," she said. "I'll just keep working hard on my grades and listening to things my teacher says so I can go somewhere like here."
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Jan. 13, 2007 - East Valley Tribune
ASU to get $1.85M in grants from Science Foundation Arizona
Arizona State University will receive $1.85 million in graduate student fellowship grants from the Science Foundation Arizona this year, the foundation said Friday.
ASU topped the University of Arizona, which will receive $1.75 million, and Northern Arizona University, which will receive $400,000, under the new state-supported program, which is designed to spur science, engineering and biomedical research in Arizona.
"By awarding these fellowships, we may be supporting a future researcher who transforms the medical field with a novel discovery or the next tech company entrepreneur who employs thousands in high-quality jobs right here in our own backyard," said William Harris, foundation president.
The universities were awarded the grants based on the recommendations of a five-member panel of experts from outside Arizona that reviewed proposals from each university. The foundation's technical staff and board of directors approved the recommendations.
Harris said the foundation's graduate research fellows will be "the highest caliber grad researchers" at the universities. "They will provide our state with a competitive advantage over other state universities and will begin to create a level playing field with the best private universities," he said.
A faculty selection committee at each university is engaged in a talent search to select the recipients of the fellowships, up to $50,000 per student.
The total number of fellowships awarded at each university will vary depending on the amount of the grant per researcher.
Andrew Webber, associate dean in the Graduate College at ASU, said he expects the award will support about 37 graduate students at ASU.
Most will be new doctoral students, he said.
He added "this focuses principally on bringing in new talent."
He said specific areas of research will include advanced communications and information technology, biosciences and sustainable systems.
"It's going to have a huge impact," Webber said of the fellowship program.
"It will provide the school with the ability to attract the really top students."
The fellowship program is one of five being implemented by the foundation to strengthen Arizona as a high-technology hub.
Also this year the foundation intends to award grants for specific research projects, help create companies that will commercialize new technologies developed at the universities, fund internships for K-12 science and math teachers and support K-12 students in science activities such as summer camps and competitions.
The foundation is supported by a $35 million "21st Century Fund" established last year by the Arizona Legislature and Gov. Janet Napolitano.
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Jan. 4, 2007 - The Arizona Republic
ASU, Higley look at options for new charter
A proposal that could result in Arizona State University's first K-12 charter school being built with Higley Unified district money likely will be revised next week, especially after discussions over finances.
ASU officials have proposed a partnership with Higley Unified, which would build the school on the university's Polytechnic campus on the Mesa-Gilbert border.
"We can't do that with our bond money . . . unless it goes to the voters," Higley board President Kim Anderson said. "They (ASU) were ready to move ahead with their own funding, so I don't know how that's going to work."
The board will discuss the financial details during its 6:30 p.m. public meeting Wednesday.
ASU plans to build charter schools on all four of its campuses, starting with the Polytechnic, said Larry Pieratt, executive director of University Public Schools Initiative, a non-profit corporation set up by ASU and its charter school initiative.
"We hope to partner with Higley in the next month or so," Pieratt said. "We don't want to compete with them."
The non-profit corporation would oversee the school's operations, while Higley Unified would build the school and retain state funding for students.
Scheduled to open in 2008, the charter school would have about 400 students in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade.
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IMPACT
Jan. 28, 2007 - East Valley Tribune
ASU students on course with water source
In Africa, even the bottled water is sometimes contaminated. Groundwater in many nations is scarce, and there aren't the billions of dollars for infrastructure needed to move and clean the continent's water.
So a group of African students at Arizona State University figured that if they could not draw safe water from the earth, perhaps they could take it from the air. The students have nearly completed work on a machine that converts humid air into drinkable water using common air-conditioning technology.
"Instead of getting cold air, we need water," said Nnditsheni Madavha, an aviation management graduate student.
The Rain Box — a water from air generator — essentially reverses the air-conditioning process. It differs from a dehumidifier in its power source and water volume, as well as by producing clean water.
The students designed it with assistance from Alter-Air Corp., a Tempe-based firm that constructs environmentally friendly cooling systems.
In the coming years, the students hope their company, named Watel Solutions, can sell the generators to their home regions and other parts of the world that are desperate for clean water. The generator requires only 60 percent humidity to work, Madavha said.
The United Nations projects that within 50 years, half of the world's population will suffer from a water shortage, including Arizonans. The students don't worry whether there will be a market for their product.
"The problem is not cyclical," said Ronald Gahimbare, a business student. "I'm pretty sure people need water every day."
The students met two years ago through the university's African Students Association. They hail from nations across the continent, from Burundi to Kenya.
The idea was born when Lionel Metchop, a mechanical engineering graduate student, saw an advertisement last year for the Intel-ASU Technology Entrepreneurship Challenge. The competition awards the best business plan to deliver their technology to the marketplace.
The Watel group took first place, winning $10,000 and a chance to compete on an international scale.
At the Intel+UC Berkeley Technology Entrepreneurship Challenge, 19 teams came from around the world. The judges, a mix of venture capitalists and engineers, gave Watel's proposal third place and $5,000.
Watel also earned the People's Choice Award because of the humanitarian nature of the project. That provided the students an additional $5,000.
With the winnings, the students had enough money to build a prototype, which they are testing. The generator can produce 40 gallons of water a day, powered only by solar panels.
Watel now needs investors to provide cash to build the first units, which Madavha said are likely to be sold to water-starved areas within the Americas. Those units will cost between $3,500 and $6,000.
Eventually, the students expect the price per generator will drop to about $1,000 when they can build units en masse.
At that cost, generators should be affordable for governments throughout Africa, where two-thirds of the continent have enough humidity to draw water, Madavha said.
The technology could benefit hundreds of millions of people.
"I know it in my heart that this will sell," Gahimbare said.
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Jan. 25, 2007 - ASU Web Devil
Researchers work to develop prosthetic hand controlled by brain
Need a hand? ASU can help.
Researchers with various specialties have teamed up this semester to develop a prosthetic hand controlled entirely by brain signals.
The project, called "Cortical Control of a Dexterous Prosthetic Hand," is funded by a $5 million grant awarded in September.
Now Steve Helms Tillery, assistant professor of engineering, and the team of researchers are trying to understand sensations and how the brain uses that sensation in hand movement.
The research involves using virtual reality to build a virtual hand. A test subject would wear a glove that monitors the shape and position of his or her hand as the subject reaches out to touch animated objects in the virtual environment.
"We'll know when you use this hand to touch the animated object, and we can process the sensory signals, as if you were actually touching it," Helms Tillery said. "Because the hand is so complicated, what we really want to understand is how these sensory signals work when you touch things."
In the next phase of the research, a robot will present the subject with real objects for him or her to touch.
Researchers hope to then be able to monitor the signals that are associated with touching real objects versus the signals involved in touching virtual objects.
"We can look at all the signals that are interrelated and then try to tease out the signals that are related to touching objects," Helms Tillery said.
Ultimately, the researchers would like to incorporate these signals in building a state-of-the-art prosthetic hand.
Bioengineering junior Kimia Seyedmadani will be working on designing the real objects that the robot will present to the test subject.
"We are seeing what [the subject] feels about the surface," Seyedmadani said. "What do you feel when something is hot? I know what it looks like when you burn your hand, but what do you feel?"
Seyedmadani is doing the research through the Fulton Undergraduate Research Initiative, a program that allows students to do undergraduate research under the guidance of a mentor.
Researchers from many disciplines are working on the project, Helms Tillery said.
"Because of the nature of the project, it requires a lot of areas of expertise, and so we have everything from roboticists and mathematicians, people who do what's called psychophysics ... and people who study brain signals," he said.
The project is a nation-wide collaboration through the National Institutes of Health Bioengineering Partnership. The University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University are also involved, among others.
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Jan. 25, 2007 - The Arizona Republic
ASU's international focus yields Peace Corps staff
Arizona State University is among the country's top producers of Peace Corps volunteers, ranking 19th among large universities with the most alumni currently serving.
ASU has 47 alumni in the Peace Corps. It ranked 35th last year, according to a Peace Corps listing.
The university has made international involvement a huge focus in the past few years through its New American University initiative, a plan that includes making ASU a more global university.
"The increase is due to the teamwork between the campuses and the Peace Corps. ASU is very cooperative in letting us give class talks and share the advantages of the Peace Corps with students," said David Briery, Peace Corps spokesman.
More than 187,000 people have volunteered in one of the Peace Corps' nearly 140 countries since 1961. ASU has had 757 Peace Corps volunteers since 1961, ASU spokeswoman Sarah Auffret said.
"I suspect part of the increase was due to greater visibility on our Web site," said William Davey, ASU director of international programs. "And additional efforts to promote the Peace Corps at events like the ASU study abroad fair, orientation."
ASU graduate Denise Davey was familiar with the Peace Corps before attending ASU, but said the university's efforts to show that the Peace Corps is a great option contributed to her interest. Davey said she plans to apply for the program this year.
"It's been a very easy process. The recruiter did a very good job, and I saw a lot of ads and a presentation on it," she said. "That kind of helped me to do the actual application process."
Contrary to many people's beliefs, today's college students are concerned about international issues, Briery said. More than 90 percent of Peace Corps volunteers have undergraduate degrees.
"Students of today seem really interested in making a difference in the world," he said.
Davey said she hopes to work in corporate finance and is hoping to write a business plan for a community center in the South Pacific.
"I think the Peace Corps will help me decide what I want to do with my life afterwards, because I'm constantly torn between going into corporate finance or international service," she said. "The Peace Corps has a lot of professional benefits to offer, and it looks good on a résumé."
Like Davey, most people become interested in the Peace Corps by hearing about it from a former member, Briery said.
"ASU is a large school and traditionally it hadn't had many volunteers, but when more and more students become volunteers, they e-mail their friends while they're overseas and then their friends develop an interest," he said.
ASU's increase is also due to academic programs that are compatible with Peace Corps opportunities. Briery said some schools offer degrees that are in high demand in Peace Corps countries.
"ASU has the Morrison School of Management and Agribusiness, and one thing Third World countries need most is help with their agriculture, so we're always looking for agriculture volunteers," he said.
Northern Arizona University's School of Forestry also produces graduates equipped to deal with issues in many Peace Corps countries, Briery said. NAU ranked 10th on the list of medium-size schools.
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Jan. 12, 2007 - The Arizona Republic
SkySong neighborhood to get new townhomes
In a new sign of revitalization around ASU's SkySong project, the troubled Belleview neighborhood will see new townhouses where low-end apartments now stand.
The non-profit Community Services of Arizona Inc. plans to tear down the apartments and build 26 homes, some of them considered affordable for the area.
The plans were a welcome relief to surrounding neighbors who came to look at renderings of the new homes at the Granite Reef Senior Center this week.
"We would like to see anything to improve the neighborhood," said Linda Collie, who has lived near Belleview since 1963.
Developer Steve Ellman did not specify relocation aid for residents. But CSA officials said they would help the tenants either buy into the new project or move to one of about two dozen affordable apartment complexes they manage around the Valley.
Brian Swanton, president and CEO of the non-profit, said the units will be a mix of homes selling for market rates and affordable rates.
Eight to 12 of the townhouses will go to people who make 80 percent of the area's median income, making the homes available to a family of four making about $48,000 per year.
Without sharing specific numbers, Swanton said the affordable homes would likely sell for about $300,000. The agency will use various programs to help first-time homebuyers acquire some of the townhouses. Buyers of the affordable homes also will have access to mortgage aid.
Scottsdale awarded CAS $825,000 in federal Community Development Block Grant funds last year to buy the property, which is just south of the SkySong site.
The Belleview tenants may have a sense of deja vu about the project. In 1999, developer Steve Ellman and the city considered condemning the apartments as part of the defunct plan to build a hockey stadium on the site of the old Los Arcos Mall. Instead, ASU won out with a project to build a business park and apartments on the mall site.
"It's just a matter of time when something like SkySong happens," said Mike Pyatok, an architect with the ASU Stardust Center for Affordable Homes and the Family, who designed the units. "(Revitalization) just snowballs." Belleview in five years will look a lot different."
Currently, an existing condominium in Scottsdale sells for a median price of $264,000. Valley-wide, condos resell for a median price of $174,000. CSA officials said Belleview prices could change by the time the townhouses go on sale in 2009.
Resident Bob Mayhew, who lives on nearby Latham Street, said that he liked the project but only for the north side of Belleview. The three-story units would be intrusive to the one-story neighborhoods that border the south side of the street, he said.
"It's awesome," Mayhew said of the proposal. "We've had a lot of problems on Belleview with loud music and police calls. It just concerns me about the height."
Mayhew said he and his neighbors would like to see similar affordable projects targeted to senior citizens.
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Jan. 1, 2007 - ASU Insight
Researchers study interplay between environment, evolution
Claudia Acquisti, a postdoctoral researcher who recently joined the Center for Evolutionary Functional Genomics at the Biodesign Institute at ASU, is providing new perspectives on environmental nutrient availability and the evolution of life.
She joins the group led by ASU professors Sudhir Kumar and James Elser, who are using methods to zoom deep within the constellation of proteins in our cells and measure the balance of elements such as nitrogen, carbon and hydrogen found in the chemical backbones of these building blocks of life.
Acquisti's latest results, published in the advanced online edition of Nature, stretch across a large-scale species comparison and vast epochs in earth's geological history to find common evolutionary threads. Her conclusions suggest that changes in Earth's atmospheric oxygen may have played a significant role on the evolution of proteins and compartments necessary for cell communication in higher organisms.
"We have used the correlation between protein oxygen content, atmospheric oxygen levels and the evolutionary age of organisms to propose the novel hypothesis that oxygen limitation contributed to the timing of the evolution of cellular communication in eukaryotic cells," says Acquisti, who completed the work at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Köln , Germany .
One of the most intriguing evolutionary leaps was the jump from bacteria cells that lacked a nucleus (prokaryotes) to the appearance of compartmentalized cells with a nucleus (eukaryotes), thought to have occurred between 2.1 and 1.8 billion years ago.
"One explanation is that atmospheric oxygen of earth was very low until about 3 billion years ago," Acquisti says. "Oxygen then was introduced quickly into the atmosphere, which led to the formation of eukaryotic cells, and has remained between 15 percent and 25 percent for the past billion years."
In the study, Acquisti calculated the oxygen content for the complete set of protein information, or proteome, for 19 different species, a compilation that represents thousands of proteins. She discovered that the difference in oxygen content found in each proteome went from low (bacteria) to high (plants and animals).
The evolutionary pressure also arose to communicate across impermeable membranes that act as a physical barrier to keep the contents of the fluid-filled compartments separate from one another. This important communication role is fulfilled by two classes of transmembrane proteins, which act as a bridge to shuttle information across membranes: channel proteins, which allow small charged molecules in and out of the cell; and receptor proteins, which trigger a cascade of intracellular communication events such as signaling in the brain.
Next, Acquisti divided the proteins into the two classes and repeated the oxygen measurements.
Acquisti proposes that the atmospheric oxygen limited the form and function of these bridge-like proteins. She says the evolution of transmembrane proteins with large extracellular domains needed for communication (receptors) may have been selected against in an ancient reducing atmosphere, which is evidenced by the low oxygen content and small size of these domains in organisms that evolved under low-oxygen conditions.
Acquisti now joins ASU School of Life Sciences professors Kumar and Elser, who already are linking interdisciplinary studies of proteomes and genomes with ecology. Their goal: to examine the carbon and nitrogen content of plant and animal proteins.
In a recent paper in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution, which was an Editor's Choice in the journal Science, Elser and colleagues compared several animal and plant proteomes and found that plant proteins have lower nitrogen content than animal proteins. The difference was the largest for proteins that are used the most in plants, indicating that nature avoids building blocks that are in short supply in plants.
The ASU team of Acquisti, Elser and Kumar will partner with their collaborator, William Fagan (University of Maryland), to build an electronic catalog of the frequency of nitrogen, carbon, sulfur, and other elements in animal and other proteins, which will be accessible through the Web. This effort is supported by a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation.
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FOUNDATION NEWS
February 2007 - ASU Foundation Notes
SkySong ‘tops out,’ adds two new international tenants
SkySong, the ASU Scottsdale Innovation Center, celebrated a milestone Feb. 1 as more than 50 foundation, university, Scottsdale and construction officials gathered at the site to witness the first building’s topping out.
The ceremony, at which the structure’s final steel beam was put into place, marks the end of structural construction and the beginning of the building’s internal and external build-out. The event offered those involved with the SkySong project an opportunity to add their signature to the beam before it went up.
In addition to the construction milestone, two new international tenants were also announced at the ceremony: Sebit, an eLearning company from Turkey, and Ubidyne, a German wireless technology developer. The companies join an impressive list of SkySong tenants, which include:
• Arizona State University entrepreneurial and interdisciplinary research programs. They include Technopolis; Arizona Technology Enterprises LLC; the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering's Entrepreneurial Programs Office; the Edson Student Entrepreneur Initiative; the Technology-Based Learning and Research program; the Center for Research on Education in Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology; and the Partnership for Research in Spatial Modeling.
• Arizona Technology Council.
• Aurigin Technology Pte. Ltd. of Singapore.
• eFunds Corp. of Scottsdale.
• Fscreen Sci-tech Co. Ltd. of Chengdu, China.
• Litree Co. of China.
• Qwest Communications Inc. of Denver.
• Sebit of Ankara, Turkey.
• Ubidyne GmbH of Munich, Germany.
• Wildfire Broadband Wireless Communications Inc. of Scottsdale.
“We’re pleased not only with the quantity of tenants we have for SkySong, but with the quality of the companies and individuals coming to be a part of it,” said Steve Evans, a member of the foundation’s board of trustees who spoke at the ceremony. Evans serves as the ASUF board representative for the SkySong project.
Additional speakers at the ceremony were Sharon Harper, president and CEO of The Plaza Companies, a co-developer of SkySong; Scottsdale Mayor Mary Manross; ASU President Michael Crow; and J. Doug Pruitt, president and CEO of Sundt Construction Inc.
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February 2007 - ASU Foundation Notes
Foundation pursues key information through alumni survey
What perceptions do ASU alumni have of their alma mater? What motivates them to give to and stay engaged with ASU?
To find out, the foundation has contracted with the Art & Science Group, one of the nation's most influential consulting firms specializing in market-related issues facing higher education and the nonprofit sector. The firm is helping the foundation develop an alumni survey research project to assist in strengthening alumni participation and broad alumni giving as part of the major university campaign.
“The objective of this project is to arrive at workable positioning, programming, and communication strategies and tactics,” said Julie Brown, vice president of development services. “Our conclusions will be based on a carefully crafted alumni survey designed to yield statistically reliable data and lead to creative, achievable solutions.”
The core project consists of three phases:
• Internal strategic analysis. This phase includes staff discussions and review of current data and documents to prepare for creating a targeted survey instrument.
• In-depth surveys. This phase encompasses the in-depth telephone survey of sufficient numbers of alumni covering several important demographics and segments.
• Evaluation. This phase includes evaluation of survey findings and recommendations for actionable steps to increase giving and participation.
The project began in November 2006, and the first phase was completed in December. Field surveys began in January and will continue through February, and final recommendations will be delivered to ASUF by April. “I’m excited about this research,” said Brown. “It will be very valuable to us and the university as we move forward with our campaign.”
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February 2007 - ASU Foundation Notes
What it’s all about: W&P gears up to distribute annual grants
Ask any of Women & Philanthropy’s 194 members why she joined, and most would say it all comes down to the involvement and choice she has in determining how the group’s contributions will impact ASU. That process is in full swing for the current season, and members will determine in February which university initiatives receive W&P grants.
The annual funding process for W&P begins in the fall with a call for grant requests from ASU schools, colleges, programs and other initiatives. Requests can fall into one of two categories: program grants and scholarship grants. This year, W&P received 23 funding requests. The W&P investment committee selected 11 of the requests for site visits, and from there narrowed the selection pool to eight. In February, the entire W&P membership will have an opportunity to hear presentations from these eight selected programs and vote on which of those they’d like to support with grants.
“This is always an exciting event for our members, because it offers them a detailed look at some of the aspects of ASU that they as members have a real opportunity to impact,” said Michele Rebeor, director of Women & Philanthropy. “We’re hoping to grant between $150,000 and $200,000 this year to support ASU’s vision of excellence, access and impact.”
The eight funding requests being presented to the membership are:
• ASYOUth – Office for Education Partnerships
• Learning Resource Center/SimBaby™ – College of Nursing & Healthcare Innovation
• Professional Development School Partnership in Pendergast School District – College of Teacher Education and Leadership (West campus)
• Accessible Educational Programs for Individuals who are Blind and Visually Impaired – Center for Cognitive Ubiquitous Computing (CUbiC)
• Summer High School Internship – The Biodesign Institute
• Barrett Summer Scholars – University Student Initiatives
• Morrison School Study Tour – Morrison School of Management and Agribusiness (Polytechnic campus)
• Digital Microform Scanner – University Libraries
“This decision-making process is what empowers our members,” said Rebeor. “Pooling their resources to make a larger contribution that will leave a larger legacy is truly inspiring for Women & Philanthropy members. We’ve seen a renewed enthusiasm for the program this year, with 28 new women joining since the fall. We look forward to playing an even greater role in ASU’s future in years to come.”
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February 2007 - ASU Foundation Notes
Parents Association seeks nominations of outstanding professors
“Who’s the greatest professor you know?”
It’s a question the ASU Parents Association asks ASU faculty, staff and students every spring as the Professor of the Year faculty-recognition program ramps up. Nominations of tenured faculty members who routinely inspire, challenge and make a difference are requested. Last year, 25 outstanding nominees were submitted for consideration, and the Parents Association hopes to have even more this year.
“Professor of the Year is one of ASU’s most prestigious awards honoring professors,” said Robin Okun Hengl, director of parent programs. “The Professor of the Year recipient receives a $10,000 cash award, an additional $10,000 ($5,000 per academic year) to fund an undergraduate student research assistant and lifelong designation as a Parents Association Professor. The recipient also becomes a fellow in the ASU Distinguished Teaching Academy. It’s a significant award for a deserving professor who truly makes an impact.”
The nomination deadline for the 2007 Professor of the Year is Feb. 23. Current ASU faculty, staff and students are invited to visit www.asu.edu/pty to learn more about the nomination process and complete the online form. The 2007 Professor of the Year will be announced at a celebration event, sponsored by TIAA-CREF, on April 16 at Old Main in the Carson Ballroom. All nominators and Professor of the Year nominees will be invited to attend.
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