UNCHARTED TERRITORY
University launches North American transborder studies center

The economic and cultural impacts of immigrant populations, the best ways to move goods across North America and quality-of-life issues faced by those living in border towns will drive the work of a new tri-national center headquartered at ASU.

The North American Center for Transborder Studies, hailed by university officials as the only organization of its kind, brings together research faculty from Canada, the United States and Mexico to collaborate with local communities, governmental officials and public agencies on challenging issues associated with border regions. it aims to influence global consideration of border issues by contributing a collaborative North American research-based perspective.

"To our knowledge, no other center in North America focuses attention on the three North American countries," says Alan Artibise, executive dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and dean of the college's Division of Social Sciences.

The center will provide multiple perspectives and have four key policy areas of research:

Additionally, the center is building a research focus on economics and transportation.

For more information, visit the center's Web site at www.asu.edu/clas/nacts.

BUILDING ON SUCCESS (back to top)
Construction school expands to meet Arizona's needs

You can't go anywhere in the Valley of the Sun without encountering construction: light rail, the Phoenix Convention Center expansion and a new hotel in downtown Phoenix; huge industrial parks everywhere, especially in the southwest valley; infill projects in Scottsdale; and new retail developments, schools and hospitals as far as the eye can see.

There won't be a lull in the action anytime soon. And while that gives members of the construction industry reason to celebrate, it's also a cause for concern. Projects may be delayed because there aren't enough professionals available with expertise in the type of project being pursued. A recent article in the Arizona Republic noted that the greatest needs locally are for project managers, who oversee entire construction developments and make sure they finish on time and within budget, and estimators, who ensure that the costs of doing a job are priced appropriately.

With that in mind, the Del E. Webb School of Construction at ASU is planning a $40 million expansion. Supported by a current campaign known as "Building Foundations," the school's growth plan calls for a brand-new 110,000-square-foot academic facility to house the school, an increase in the faculty's headcount to 40 and a surge in enrollment to 800, approximately double the school's current enrollment.

The expansion will be financed by $20 million raised from industry sources and another $20 million in proposed debt financing for the school.

One element of the expansion is being championed by alumni associated with the Arizona chapter of Associated General Contractors of America, an organization made up of member companies that include contractors, construction companies and homebuilders. The chapter launched a $4 million campaign in November to help the construction school augment its heavy-construction curriculum and participate in the larger expansion plans.

One of the campaign's leaders is Stephen Basila '89 B.S., president of Pulice Construction. Basila said despite a surge in heavy construction 9which covers projects such as highways, power plans and pipelines), only 10 percent of the school's students are majoring in the subject.

In two months, the chapter's member organizations have contributed more than $2 million. David Martin '89 B.S., president of the Arizona chapter said the organization's vision is to use $3 million of the projected funds to endow a professorship to bolster an academic concentration in heavy highway construction. The remaining $1 million would go toward the construction school's expansion plans, he said.

For more information about the school of construction or its expansion, please visit http://construction.asu.edu.

EMISSION STATEMENT (back to top)
ASU commits to greenhouse gas reduction

Pledging to significantly reduce and eventually neutralize carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming, ASU President Michael Crow announced his signing of the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment in late February.

Under the Presidents Climate Commitment, ASU will establish policies and practices to become "climate neutral," by minimizing carbon emissions as much as possible and using carbon offsets or other measures to mitigate the remaining emissions.

With Crow's signature, ASU is committed to developing a comprehensive plan to achieve climate neutrality as soon as possible. This includes completing an inventory of greenhouse gas emissions (including emissions from electricity, heating, commuting and air travel) - and, within two years, developing an institutional action plan for becoming climate neutral.

Crow is a founding member of the leadership circle that promotes the agreement. Under the guidance and direction of the leadership circle, commitment is being supported and implemented by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in higher Education, Second Nature and ecoAmerica.

AS of Feb. 27, 99 colleges and universities had committed themselves to the agreement. The goal, according to Jim Buizer, executive director of ASU's Office of Sustainability Initiatives, is to secure 250 signatories by June, when the college and university presidents who sign the pact hold their national meeting, and 1,000 signatories by 2009.

More information on the presidents Climate Commitment is available at www.presidentsclimatecommitment.org.

MANY SPECIES, ONE PURPOSE (back to top)
Wheeler to lead 'cyber' species exploration institute

As far back as he can remember, Quentin Wheeler, newly appointed vice president and dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, has been on a quest to discover unknown species. A life-altering moment, he recalls, may have been at age 8, when, trying out his friend's new birthday gift — a cheap department-store microscope — he brought into focus protozoa "swimming" in a drop of water.

Fast forward to the present, where there are roughly 1.7 million named species, representing at most 20 percent of living species on Earth, according to Wheeler. To accelerate human knowledge and understanding of the planet's living diversity, Wheeler will establish the International Institute for Species Exploration at ASU, which will lead in the creation of "cybertaxonomy," a fusion of taxonomy with computer sciences and engineering. The institute will be housed in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences with strong linkages to the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering.

Wheeler joined ASU in July as a professor in the School of Life Sciences with the task of establishing the new research institute. Soon after, he was asked to serve as the interim dean of the Division of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. In late December, he was appointed vice president and dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, succeeding David A. Young, who moved into the newly created position of senior vice president for academic affairs.

FINE MINDS (back to top)
Student award winners showcase promise, excellence

With the coming of spring, a new group of high-level student award winners burst forth like tree blossoms. ASU has seen a healthy share of student achievers rewarded for their hard work this season, as the following roundup of award announcement demonstrates.

Truman Scholar
It's hard to say what may have impressed the Truman Scholarship Foundation committee the most, leading them to award a $30,00 scholarship to ASU junior Megan McGinnity in early April.

Whatever it was, the committee awarded her the prestigious Harry S. Truman Scholarship, the nation's highest undergraduate leadership award given to about 75 college juniors each year who exhibit outstanding leadership potential and the intent to pursue careers in public service.

USA Today: All -USA College Academic Second Team
James Cronican, a senior in biochemistry was named to the USA Today All-USA College Academic Second Team for his exceptional intellectual achievement and leadership. Cronican was recognized in part because he designed a machine that will rapidly and automatically extract DNA and RNA from tissue, streamlining the complex hour-long process into one that takes about 20 minutes.

Udall Scholars
Three dynamic women who share a dream of helping Native American communities have won national Udall Scholarships. Only about 70 sophomores and juniors are selected to receive the $5,000 awards each year, given to students who intend to pursue careers in tribal policy, health care and environmental public policy.

ASU's 2007 class of Udall Scholars includes: Sharon Cini, an American Indian Studies major in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; Jennifer Jackson, majoring in elementary education in the Fulton College of Education and also in family studies; and Andrea Garfinkel-Castro, an urban planning major in the College of Design.

Goldwater Scholars
Two outstanding students having been chosen to receive Goldwater Scholarships, the nation's highest award for undergraduates who are planning careers in scientific research, Eric Anderson, bioengineering sophomore, and Allison Engstrom, material science and engineering junior, were awarded the $7,500 scholarship.

GIFTS AND GRANTS (back to top)

ASU will receive $1.85 million from the Science Foundation of Arizona as part of the foundation's graduate Student Fellowship program. The grant will fund about 37 graduate students for up to $50,000 each. The funds will enable ASU to attract top-notch students in three specific areas: sustainable energy, the diagnosis and prevention of infectious diseases, and the interfacing of mechanical and computational technologies with people.

Linell Cady, director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict, has been awarded $775,000 by the Ford Foundation to study the nature and varieties of secularism through a project titled "Public Religion, the Secular, and Democracy: An International Cross-disciplinary Project."

The multi-year project will focus on research on secularism in four countries: France, india, Turkey and the United States.

ASU chemist Peiming Zhang and his collaborator Jian Gu have been awarded a grant from the National Human Genome Research Institute totaling $897,000 for an ambitious DNA sequencing project that combines physics, chemistry and nanotechnology with engineering and could ultimately enable scientists to sequence billions of base pairs of DNA in a single day.

Don Gervasio, an associate research professor at the Biodesign Institute's Center for Applied NanoBioscience, will oversee a team that was awarded a $1.5 million grant by the U.S. Department of Energy to develop new fuel cell components to more efficiently generate electrical power.

Researchers at The University of Arizona and Arizona State University have been awarded more than $2 million in grant money from the voter-approved sales tax increase that created the Technology Research infrastructure Fund to finance collaborative biomedical research projects designed to accelerate the translation of research discoveries to the clinic and target diseases such as asthma, Parkinson's disease, valley fever and cancer.

A total of 10 research projects, involving co-principal investigators from both universities, will receive funding in the next year, with researchers at ASU's Biodesign Institute and UA's BIO5 Institute receiving nearly $1.2 million for four of the 10 research projects.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has awarded a $4.3 million dollar grant to a global team of researchers, which includes Anne Kinzig, an associate professor of life sciences, as a core member, in order to address the question of how to assess the benefits of conservation and weigh those against other potential uses of a landscape.

The grant, "Advancing Conservation in a Social Context," is one of the largest the MacArthur Foundation ever has awarded to a public university, and it will have its administrative home in the Global Institute of Sustainability at ASU.

Gregory and Emma Melikian recently donated $1 million to Arizona State University to expand the school's Russian and EAst European Studies center, which will be renamed the Melikian Center. The center will continue the work of the Critical Languages Institute, a program that provides language instruction and research in less commonly taught languages such as Albanian, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Polish and Tatar.

Strike up the bank! Vice President of Athletics Lisa Love announced March 19 that a gift from an anonymous donor of over $700,000 had been deposited with the Sun Angel Foundation to be used to bring new spirit to the Sun Devil Marching Band. The gift will be used to purchase new uniforms, instruments and other equipment for the 2007-08 academic year.

The Bank of America in late February announced it would donate a $1 million grant from the Bank of America Charitable Foundation to Arizona State University's Herberger College of the Arts, to establish the Bank of America ArtsWork Endowed Fund.

HE DIGS IT (back to top)
Cronkite visits downtown Phoenix campus for groundbreaking

Sporting a shiny new hard hat and clutching a large shovel, legendary newsman Walter Cronkite dug into the dirt at the Feb. 21 groundbreaking for the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication and Arizona PBS affiliate Eight/KAET-TV at ASU's Downtown Phoenix campus.

The six-story, 223,000-square-foot complex will be located on the northern end of the campus. The journalism school's portion of the new building will be five times the size of its current home at the Tempe campus, and come fully equipped with cutting-edge amenities for the building's newsrooms, computer labs, TV studios, classrooms, offices and auditorium. Eight, Arizona's PBS affiliate, also will occupy the new building. Funding for the $71 million project stems from a $223 million bond passed by Phoenix voters in March 2006 to develop an ASU campus in Phoenix.

UNIVERSITY SHINES IN SOLAR INITIATIVE ROLE  (back to top)

ASU is a partner in two grants to further develop solar energy recently awarded by the U.S. Department of Energy. The grants are part of the Solar America Initiative, announced last year by PResident George W. Bush.

The grants are industry led solar-techonlogy development projects selected for up to $168 million (fiscal years 2007-2009) in total funding. The 13 teams that secured grants will provide more than 50 percent of the funding for these projects, potentially bringing the total research investment to more than $357 million. The projects are expected to help significantly lower the costs of producing and distributing solar energy, bringing it more in line with conventional energy sources.

ASU units involved in the projects are the college of Design, the Power Systems Energy Research Center, the Electrical Engineering Department, the Photovoltaic Testing Lab and the Electronic Systems Department.

NANOIONICS CENTER'S BIG FOCUS ON SMALL THINGS  (back to top)

What happens on an incredibly small scale is a big deal at ASU. A new Center for Applied Nanoionics promises to provide major new collaborations and advances in this burgeoning field, which focuses on the behavior of materials on an atomic scale.

Nanoionics involves materials and devices that rely on ion transport and chemical change at the nanoscale (a nonometer is one-billionth of a meter).

Michael Kozicki, an ASU professor of electrical engineering and director of the new center says some of the promising applications of nanoionics include solid-state electronics, especially in memory devices, data storage and logic; use in micro-electromechanical systems, which combine electronic and mechanical devices operating at small scales; use in optical switches and displays; and use in microvalves and other fluid control devices, which could lead to lab-on-a-chip devices and medical implants.

GLOBAL WARMING ADAPTATION DEBATE HEATS UP  (back to top)

Temperatures are rising on Earth, but what may be needed most to combat global warming is a greater focus on adapting to our changing planet, say policy experts writing in the Feb. 8 issue of Nature magazine.

The experts team, which includes Daniel Sarewitz, director of ASU's Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes, say adapting to the changing climate by building resilient societies and fostering sustainable development would go further in securing a future for humans on a warming planet than just cutting emissions.

"New ways of thinking about, talking about and acting on climate change are necessary if a changing society is to adapt to a changing climate," the researchers state in "Lifting the Taboo on Adaptation."

Sarewitz and his colleagues argue that the time has come to elevate adaptation to the same level of attention and effort as the more popular mitigation of greenhouse gases, and that the future of the planet demands realistic actions to help the survival of humans.

"The obsession with researching and reducing the human effects on climate has obscured the more important problems of how to build more resilient and sustainable societies, especially in poor regions and countries" Sarewitz said.