Opportunities

At Arizona State University, you will be hard-pressed to find a group or department discussing education without simultaneously discussing scale. If we are reaching one hundred learners with a product or course offering, can we reach 200? What about 500? At EdPlus, the division which houses Education for Humanity, scale is deeply embedded in our DNA.

Last month, my friend, Paul Maurice Johnson, lost his battle to cancer at the age of 29. He left behind his wife and four year old son. During his funeral, we remembered Paul as a great friend and a man who possessed a remarkable ability to be optimistic about everything. Even through his daily challenge of being sick from cancer treatments, he constantly checked in with friends communicating genuine excitement and care for those he knew. Paul saw his problem of fighting cancer as an opportunity to inspire people to continue on in their own battles whatever they may be.

Applications for Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) 2015 are now open. The annual conference will be held at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida, from March 6-8.

The current state of Arizona is not the Arizona We Want, as determined by the Center for the Future of Arizona. But last week, Arizona made huge strides in addressing the complex challenges we face at the 2014 Arizona Leadership Forum, an ongoing movement that convenes leaders in nonprofit, corporate, philanthropic and civic sectors to communicate, collaborate and lead together for the social, economic, and cultural advancement of our state.

Many unfortunate features of the Arizona education system are regularly discussed and documented. As Arizona is set to become a majority-minority state within the next two decades, the Latino education gapthreatens the long-term economic viability of our state. We also face an impending established teacher shortfall, with annual teacher retention rates of only 65%.

What are your greatest transferrable skills? How do you market those skills to your future employer? Are you an agile learner, and if so, how do you leverage such a skill in the job hunt? These are the questions explored in UI’s June Snacks and Skills. To see the entire presentation, access the Prezi.

Earlier this spring, the Office of University Initiatives launched the Action Collab Design Process to discover opportunities and solutions to heighten ASU’s social embeddedness landscape. (For a recap of the first part of this process, read this blog.) On June 19, a second group of community engagement practitioners from across the institution gathered to tackle a design question built upon opportunities presented from the first session:  How might we better track service learning and community-based internships across ASU?

Institutions of higher education are environments of silos, with most units functioning in isolation. ASU is no exception. Faculty and staff remain in their unit, department and college with narrow lenses and even slimmer variety of perspectives. When people do the same things, work in the same groups and tackle problems the same way, repetition impedes innovation.