Arizona’s public four-year universities experienced undergraduate enrollment gains of 5.1% between spring 2021 and spring 2022, outpacing all but three other states. Here’s a brief overview of some of the latest news and innovations that hope to keep University of Arizona, Arizona State University, and Northern Arizona University on an enrollment roll heading into the new school year.
Schools of Thought
A brief overview of some of the latest news and innovations that hope to keep University of Arizona, Arizona State University, and Northern Arizona University on an enrollment roll heading into the new school year.
Arizona State University, Tempe
In early June, Arizona State University announced its designation as a Hispanic-Serving Institution by the U.S. Department of Education, joining the UA and NAU with the distinction of having at least a quarter of undergraduates identifying as Latino. The recognition positions the university to receive federal funding to increase programs, help more Latino students graduate, and foster cooperation with other higher-education institutions.
The U.S. Space Force and ASU have signed an agreement that makes ASU the newest member of the service’s University Partnership Program. Based on its reputation in space engineering, defense research and innovation—and as the home to the School of Earth and Space Exploration—ASU will collaborate with the Space Force in research and education, as well as by assembling partnerships and models. ASU’s participation in more than 20 space missions and extensive background in defense research will be a significant asset for creating future USSF programs.
A research team, led by an astrophysicist Sumner Starrfield in ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration and colleagues from University of Minnesota and The Ohio State University, published a study in the Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society about the fastest nova ever recorded: V1674 Hercules. In layman’s terms, a nova results when a white dwarf heats the material from a nearby companion star, releasing an uncontrolled burst of energy that temporarily increases its brightness.
During its 75th anniversary global reunion week in April, the Thunderbird School of Global Management at ASU celebrated the grand opening of its new state-of-the-art global headquarters in downtown Phoenix. The F. Francis & Dionne Najafi Global Headquarters was designed by Moore Ruble Yudell and Jones Studio, and spans 110,000 square feet on ASU’s Downtown Phoenix campus.
The technologically advanced building features state-of-the-art flexible classrooms, 1,600 square feet of displays, and multiple studios to facilitate full immersive language learning and experiential activities.
Heading into the fall sports season, ASU received positive off-the-field news about its Academic Progress Rate (APR), which the NCAA uses to track eligibility, retention and graduation rates of student athletes. ASU’s 2020-21 APR score of 994 is the highest in the university’s history and marks the first time leading the Pac-12 conference—ahead of Stanford. Eleven of the 13 women’s teams notched perfect scores of 1000, while four men’s teams hit all-time APR highs.
University of Arizona, Tucson
In June, the University of Arizona received recognition from global higher education analysis company Quacquarelli Symonds as one of the most impactful research universities in the world, moving up six spots from last year’s ranking to #262 globally and #25 among public U.S. institutions.
As a testimony to the university’s global impact, you can look back in time, out into space, or to the other side of the planet. A new study led by UA researchers and published in the journal Nature Geoscience unlocked two long-standing mysteries about the ice sheets that rapidly expanded in the Northern Hemisphere during the most recent ice age, 100,000 years ago. Meanwhile, UA astronomers identified five examples of a new class of stellar system that contains only young, blue stars, which appear as “blue blobs” when viewed through a telescope, while UA Health Sciences and the University of Western Australia Medical School in Perth formalized a framework for developing academic and cultural interchanges in teaching, research and other activities in health sciences.
The university is embarking on several important diversity initiatives, as well. UA and 19 other top U.S. research universities announced the formation of the Alliance of Hispanic Serving Research Universities, which is geared towards increasing the number of Hispanic doctoral students and faculty members. Earlier this summer, the school announced a yearlong celebration of Juneteenth, focused on speakers, educational resources and virtual reality experiences to tell the story of Black people in the Southwest, and an announcement that it will be observed as a paid holiday beginning in 2023.
Other programs at the UA will specifically impact Arizona’s Native American tribes and tribal students, which is a vital part of the university’s strategic plan. The university has announced that undergraduate students from the state’s 22 federally recognized Native American tribes will be eligible for the Arizona Native Scholars Grant beginning in the fall. The first program of its kind in the state, it will mean that qualified students can attend the UA main campus in Tucson free of tuition and mandatory fees.
In the UA College of Education program, Native Student Outreach, Access and Resiliency provides mentorship and educational resources to Arizona’s Indigenous communities—and was recently given a boost from a $1.2 million grant from the Arizona Department of Education.
Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff
Like ASU and UA, Northern Arizona University has connections to NASA—but appropriately for the Lumberjacks, the newest partnership involves the science of forests. A team of researchers led by NAU’s Center for Ecosystem Science and Society (Ecoss) has received a $900,000 grant from NASA to learn more about what is causing some forests to reburn on a faster timeline.
Research for the project “Drivers and Impacts of Reburning in Boreal Forest Ecosystems” will involve matching satellite and LIDAR aerial images with measurements taken on the ground, in an effort to better understand how climate conditions, forest stand age and species composition, and other stress factors affect forest vulnerability and recovery.
While the COVID-19 pandemic is no longer the top headline every day, work is being done behind the scenes to improve disease modeling and public health decision-making. At NAU’s School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems (SICCS), assistant professor Joe Mihaljevic has been working with public health partners across Arizona and the U.S. to share computer models mapping the spread of the coronavirus.
A disease ecologist who applies epidemiological modeling techniques to wildlife and human diseases, Mihaljevic was awarded more than $3.5 million by the National Institutes for Health to create Epidemiological Modeling Resources for Public Health (EpiMoRPH), which will automate and expedite the development of epidemiological models and forecasting. The multi-institutional collaboration includes a team from NAU, TGen, University of Nebraska, Northwestern University, the Arizona Department of Health Services, and ASU.
In a high-tech world, encouraging students to go into STEM fields has never been more important, which means it’s outstanding news that NAU has been awarded $1.49 million in funding through the National Science Foundation’s Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics program. The funding will support a new initiative, “Scholarship Opportunities for Student Retention and Degree Attainment in Undergraduate Engineering and Computer Science,” which is geared towards identifying, recruiting, mentoring and rewarding academically promising, underrepresented and financially disadvantaged students—particularly those from Navajo Nation.
At the end of the spring semester, NAU announced its Access2Excellence initiative, which will provide a tuition-free college education for every Arizona resident with a household income of $65,000 or below. The program begins in fall 2023 for first-year and transfer students who attend NAU in Flagstaff or at one of the university’s sites throughout Arizona.
Better Together
While the rivalry is fierce between Arizona’s three public universities, they also come together to make our state a better place. In cooperation with Arizona Public Service Co., Salt River Project, Tucson Electric Power and Southwest Gas, the universities have formed a new, interdisciplinary coalition with the goal of attaining a carbon neutral economy in Arizona. The first initiative was the establishment of the Center for an Arizona Carbon-Neutral Economy at the ASU Tempe campus, which will pursue the creation of a regional clean hydrogen hub.
Researchers at the three universities, in collaboration with TGen and Arizona Department of Health Services, are also active partners in the Arizona COVID-19 Genomics Union (ACGU). Early this summer, ACGU reached a notable milestone in pandemic research, announcing the genomic sequencing of more than 100,000 samples of the COVID-19 virus.
Photos supplied by Arizona State University, University of Arizona and Northern Arizona University.