engineering

GEAR Day is an annual event put on by ASU’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering Society of Women Engineers. The goal of this event is to encourage young women to consider continuing their education in a science or engineering related field. Taking place in a community center such as the Boys & Girls Club or ASU campus, the event is split into two age groups, elementary school girls in the morning and middle school girls in the afternoon. Activity kits donated by Agilent Technologies help demonstrate to the girls how science and engineering affect their lives.

technology and innovation

ASU’s College of Technology and Innovation is committed to putting the "fun" back into learning, engaging younger students in a way that is fun and hands-on. Middle school students are asked to build a Rube Goldberg device, a contraption that performs what most people would suppose is a simple, trivial task in an unnecessarily complicated, complex or convoluted manner. Building one of these is a great way to introduce engineering principles to the students, drawing a straight line between bedrock engineering principles and activities that are fun.

Eight, Arizona PBS

In 2011, ASU’s member-supported TV station Eight, Arizona PBS unveiled its new on-demand PBS Learning Media platform, signing up nearly 6,000 Arizona teachers. Free to educators, the vast digital content service provides instant access to more than 19,000 classroom-ready digital resources, drawing on the best available high-quality digital media from 1,500 public media producers and 350 local PBS stations. Its classroom-ready, curriculum-targeted, multi-platform resources align with national and common core standards for pre-K to grade-16 classrooms.

athletics

ASU student-athletes regularly visit local elementary schools and children’s hospitals, team up with nonprofit organizations in the community and volunteer at events across the Valley. Sun Devil Athletics increases ASU’s prominence and influence in not only the Phoenix area, but also the state as a whole. On a national level, Sun Devil Athletics quickly agreed to host the Louisiana State University Tigers football game that was originally scheduled to take place in Baton Rouge, La., after Hurricane Katrina made landfall. With only a five-day notice, Sun Devil Athletics hosted the game, provided a much needed distraction from the tragedy and donated $1,000,000 for Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.

Gammage

ASU Gammage, which recently celebrated its 50th anniversary, creates connections with the community by delivering quality programming that impacts ASU and the surrounding community. One way that ASU Gammage strengthens the community is through the arts residency program Journey Home, which helps incarcerated women develop a positive identity and self-esteem through performance, visual arts, creative writing and storytelling. The women conclude the program with a performance in which they tell their stories to community members and the prison administration.

The ASU Gammage Residency brings a world-renowned performing artist to ASU for three years to perform, teach, mentor and engage with ASU students and the local community. The current artist in residency is two-time Tony Award Winner and Kennedy Center Honoree Bill T. Jones, an acclaimed contemporary choreographer and director.

ASU Gammage also offers Camp Broadway each summer, a yearly performing arts camp for children ages 10 to 17 taught by Broadway professionals. Now in its 14th year, Camp Broadway sells out each summer and is a creative and fun opportunity for kids to experience acting, scene study, improvisation, music theory, singing and dancing, all taught by acclaimed professionals.

community

ASU Preparatory Academy is an innovative K-12 public charter school open to all students living in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area, with another academy at ASU’s Polytechnic campus. The academy’s “Dream It. Do It. Challenge” curriculum, developed by Ashoka Youth Venture, was the perfect fit for the required Capstone Experience in which students implement ideas to improve society. Though the curriculum is used in 19 countries around the world, the ASU Preparatory Academies are the first school system to utilize the program as part of a required formal class structure to engage all students during the regular school day.

Every year since 2008, ASU has been named to the President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll – the highest federal recognition a university can receive for its commitment to volunteering, service learning and civic engagement. In the 2010-11 academic year, more than 14,000 students engaged in 400,000 hours of community service.

One such effort was established in 2003, the Stardust Center for Affordable Homes and the Family. This program engages in design/build efforts to create models of affordable, sustainable housing that also are designed to be culturally specific.

ASU’s American Dream Academy, a program established to help parents in low-income, disadvantaged areas learn how to support their children’s educational experience, won the regional and national 2009 C. Peter Magrath University Community Engagement Award. More than 20,000 parents have graduated from the American Dream Academy. Since 2006, the program has served more than 333 schools and organizations, and indirectly impacted almost 52,000 low-income, minority youth throughout the greater Phoenix region.

law

The past decade has seen a marked shift in focus for the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law as it sought ways to tackle global legal issues and create more practice-ready graduates while helping the underserved in our community. The college’s pro-bono program provides more than 100,000 hours of free legal service annually. Additionally, externships include over 200 community partners. More than 3,300 community members are served by the college’s legal clinics, and over 90 percent of the students volunteer. The college also instituted a new trial advocacy program with the participation of the state’s top 50 attorneys.

arts and sciences

Since its inception in 2008, ASU’s Origins Project, a transdisciplinary effort that nurtures research, energizes teaching and builds partnerships, has explored the origins of several fascinating questions at the leading edge of science. Origins brings in some of the world’s best scholars to interact with ASU faculty on research issues and to explore cutting-edge topics in workshops. Communicating to the public also has been a fundamental role of Origins, which sponsors public lectures and programs including a debate on climate change and a Science and Culture Festival attended by thousands. Director Lawrence Krauss recently was given the 2012 National Science Board Public Service Award for his efforts in increasing public awareness of science in the United States.

back next