Arizona State University: Overview
Prepared 1/24/07 for “Civic Engagement and Research Universities”
At ASU, we speak of becoming a New American University — a university that assumes responsibility for the economic, social, and cultural vitality of its community. Core to this vision is our connection to the community, which we refer to as “social embeddedness.”
Social Embeddedness
At ASU, we define social embeddedness as mutually-beneficial partnerships between the university and communities. We include these interrelated actions:
- Community capacity building — enabling community-based organizations and institutions to become strong and effective by providing support, training, and access to resources and information
- Teaching and learning — involving faculty and students in solving problems facing communities
- Economic development — responding to the needs of the university and the needs of communities as ASU pursues its role as an economic engine
- Social development — enhancing the well-being of the diverse people and communities of Arizona by working closely with public and private institutions
- Research — advancing relevant inquiry by valuing community input, knowledge, and needs
With the advancement of our vision for ASU as a New American University, we have recognized the need for new ways of engaging with the community and for the development of infrastructure to support our students, staff, and faculty in doing so. We have recently put in place an interactive web site called ASU in the Community which serves as an online resource of all of ASU’s community outreach programs with an accompanying e-newsletter that shares with subscribers the range in programs underway as well as stories of how others around the university are doing socially embedded work.
ASU in the Community
ASU offers 419 programs in 505 locations, representing 1055 outreach opportunities throughout the state. We make a difference in the lives of Arizonans by providing needed educational, cultural, legal and health care services at hundreds of locations.
Hundreds of faculty members across all four ASU campuses take their research and teaching into the community, leading to more relevant research, a vibrant educational experience for students and rich benefits for the people of Arizona. One example is theater professor Stephani Woodson. She helps children in foster care create digital videos about themselves to tell their stories to new caseworkers, who often pass through their lives with little continuity.
In addition to faculty activities, thousands of students across the ASU campuses participate regularly in organized community service. In the Academic Community Engagement Services program alone last year, 575 students mentored and tutored children in service-learning internships or in “America Reads” and “America Counts” programs in schools throughout the Valley. More than 23,000 community members were served.
Students’ engagement in the community is backed up by coursework ranging from citizen participation in planning, to social change in theatre, to service learning in the sciences. Students’ research with communities includes urban growth and gentrification in geography, high school dropout prevention in business, and wind power on tribal lands in engineering.
Our exemplary initiatives to date combine university-wide research with service to create partnerships that utilize ASU resources for the benefit of the community. For example, the Stardust Center for Affordable Homes and the Family creates sustainable and culturally responsive housing designs in partnership with families and communities, educates on the importance of quality, high-density and affordable housing for the Phoenix metropolitan area, and contributes in terms of zoning and planning recommendations and design services based upon its research.
Going Forward
These efforts are all part of the strong base ASU has been laying for a comprehensive social embeddedness program. We are proud of what has been accomplished, but we also realize that there is much to be done. Beginning in September 2004, more than 200 individuals in the metropolitan Phoenix region have been interviewed in person about ASU’s social embeddedness. Individuals interviewed include ASU faculty and administration, nonprofit leaders, business leaders, policy analysts, philanthropic organizations, elected officials, and community-based and ethnic leaders. ASU has used the interviews described above to shape its social embeddedness agenda. A group of 36 faculty, staff, administrators and students form the Social Embeddedness Steering Committee and have put forward significant recommendations for how the university can be socially embedded. A plan is being produced out of those recommendations, and it will be widely shared within ASU and with our communities.
