Arizona State University

In an effort to reach as many students, faculty and staff as possible during an emergency, ASU has added text message notification to its list of communication channels.

The new system joins an existing pool of communication methods that ASU can deploy during an emergency to inform students, faculty and staff.

Other methods include:

• E-mail.

• Reverse 9-1-1 calls to campus land lines.

• Emergency hot line.

• Emergency bulletins to media.

• Electronic billboards.

• Public address systems.

• ASU Web site.

• Door-to-door notifications.

Launching the text message system is part of a comprehensive endeavor by ASU to better inform the university community about emergency preparedness and response. Other efforts include a new Web site dedicated to educating the university community on emergency situations and increased training for all emergency responders across the university.

The enhanced attention to emergency response at ASU comes at a critical time for universities across the nation in light of the tragic incident at Virginia Tech April 16. Several reports on the incident have been released and ASU is carefully reviewing all reports for lessons learned.

“The safety and security of our university community is a very high priority at ASU,” says Paul Ward, vice president for university administration and general counsel, and ASU’s chief emergency policy executive. “We’re evaluating all reports related to the Virginia Tech tragedy and reviewing emergency procedures to ensure we’re implementing the most appropriate response.”

One learning lesson that came out of Virginia Tech almost immediately following was the use of a text message system to communicate quickly to students, faculty and staff on and off campus. ASU was researching such a system before April, but sped up the process after the tragedy in Blacksburg, Va.

“We had discussions before April, but the Virginia Tech incident brought such a tragedy to reality and we pushed forth the project immediately,” says Rose Snow, director of technology alliances for the university technology office (UTO).

Snow says that UTO sent out a Request for Proposal (RFP) to establish a cellular/wireless partnership in early spring. Verizon Wireless was selected because of its expansive network, excellent customer service and additional applications such as a text messaging service.

The text message system is an opt-in service in which students, faculty and staff can choose to receive a text from ASU in times of an emergency. To sign up for the service, visit the Web site www.asu.edu/go/alert_text. An ASU- Rite identification and password is needed to sign up.

If an emergency is in progress at the university, ASU can send a text message of up to 150 characters to those who subscribe to the program. The message will provide immediate instructions for the community and give a resource to obtain further information.

For those with a Verizon cellular plan, there is no charge for the text; those who have other providers may be charged 15 cents per text. Subscribers can provide up to three different phone numbers for notification.

For more information on ASU’s emergency plans, check out the university’s newest Web site: www.asu.edu/emergency. On this site, students, faculty, staff members and parents can find all information relevant to emergency preparedness and response at ASU, including important phone numbers, workshops and presentations, procedures and other resources.

“Much of this information was accessible somewhere online, but in various places that were difficult to find,” Ward says. “ASU decided to create one Web location for all emergency-related resources to better inform our university community generally, and a multiple-point, duplicative communication system to provide information to the largest number of people possible in the event of an emergency.”

Following the heels of these two enhanced communication efforts, ASU also beefed up its training and protocols. Numerous ASU staff who would be called upon during an emergency attended a session in July on the university’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC) and how everyone will contribute a specific role during an emergency. Training for these individuals is continuing through the fall semester and a tabletop drill to test the EOC and its effectiveness is planned during the first quarter of 2008.

ASU has a comprehensive emergency operations plan that follows federal standards and complies with the National Incident Management System (NIMS) guidelines. To view the plan, visit the Web site http://eoc.pd.asu.edu.

Students, faculty and staff members who wish to anonymously report a violation of safety or compliance on campus can contact the hot line by calling (877) 786-3385. For other emergency numbers, visit the Web site www.asu.edu/emergency.

When James Tibbs decided to pursue a college education, it was later than most: almost 20 years after he had graduated from Alhambra High School in Phoenix in 1983. And it wasn’t with the thought he would design and create a computer database system to track and inventory evidence and evidentiary information for the Arizona Counter Terrorism Information Center (AcTIC).

Tibbs, 41, graduated from ASU’s New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences in 2006 with a bachelor’s degree in political science, as well as one in interdisciplinary studies. The internship he served before receiving his diploma put him in a James Bond-like world with the interagency intelligence operation that is the centerpiece of Arizona’s homeland security detection and prevention strategy.

“Not every internship is quite so mysterious or exotic, but we do our best to provide our students with a real-world experience that will better prepare them for a professional career,” says Elaine Jordan, who placed nearly 80 students in internships last year as the program manager for the New College.

“The students gain tremendous knowledge during their years at ASU, and they learn that their skills are transferable,” says Jordan, who earned her doctorate in international relations from ASU. “As they think about what they will do after graduation, some continue their education, while others use the internship to gain valuable experience and as a bridge between college and their careers.”

For Tibbs, the opportunity to work with AcTIC was an extension of his interest in the subject area. The agency, boasting 17 different divisions, works with 43 different agencies and provides the initial framework for counter terrorism detection, planning, response and recovery for the state of Arizona.

“I’ve always been interested in terrorism and security, and when Dr. Jordan approached me with the idea, I jumped at it,” he says.

The internship was the capstone of a journey that led from two associate’s degrees at Paradise Valley Community College to two years at ASU’s West campus and a pair of bachelor’s degrees.

“I’m a single parent, and I wanted to get back to school, but the timing was never right,” says Tibbs, who hopes to use his AcTIC experience as a springboard to further work for the agency, or in other civil and law enforcement areas. “I just couldn’t fit it in. But I saw a trend in my job situation that I didn’t like, and I knew going to college was going to open up opportunities and experiences I wasn’t currently realizing.”

Tibbs’ contribution to AcTIC was nearly immediate, although it surprised him. The project assigned by Department of Public Safety Lt. Lori Norris – also the AcTIC watch center commander – was to write a database to more easily and effectively monitor and catalog evidence that entered and left the agency’s Phoenix headquarters.

“What I learned through the New College was that a narrow focus doesn’t work, and that there is a bigger picture that you are a part of,” Tibbs says. “You have to take a, ‘Yeah, I can do this,’ approach to everything in life, and that is what I did at AcTIC – although it was pretty unusual territory. It was everything from phones and computers, to other types of equipment that had either been confiscated or secured. Some of it was relevant to pending cases, some of it wasn’t.”

Tibbs was given the proverbial “baptism under fire” and worked beyond the one-semester time frame to complete the effort.

“I designed a system that was trackable, so that evidence could be searched, depending on the individual case, and immediately pulled by AcTIC investigators when needed,” he says. “When it was done and it worked, it was such a great feeling; it was really incredible. I had the feeling that I was really doing something important, and that was rewarding. It was a real confidence-builder.”

For his efforts, Tibbs was presented with a plaque by Sgt. Randy Arthur, AcTIC’s computer forensic lab supervisor.

Tibbs’ program has been incorporated into AcTIC’s operations so successfully that the organization’s sister lab in Tucson will use the program.

“James was assigned to the computer forensic lab to upgrade the system,” says Norris, who received a bachelor’s degree in police science and administration from Northern Arizona University, and who has been with DPS for 27 years and with AcTIC since its inception in 2004. “It was a learning experience for him, and he educated himself to upgrade and update the database. What he did for AcTIC was most definitely an improvement; he was a tremendous asset, and his work allowed our officers to spend more time pursuing their cases.”

Tibbs’ internship took him into a world much different from most internships, Jordan says.

“We have developed a great and valuable partnership with leaders of local and even national companies, businesses and agencies who know the strengths of our students and the many wonderful benefits they provide,” she says.

From the Hand Surgery Associates of Michigan, to Major League Baseball’s Texas Rangers, to the Office of the Governor of the State of Arizona, to the St. Mary’s Food Bank, and from dozens of other opportunities, ASU’s internship program in the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences is a potpourri of learning experiences designed to better prepare its students for life in the world.

Two multinational teams of scientists, including four researchers from ASU, are reporting that traces of oxygen appeared in Earth’s atmosphere earlier than previously thought.

The discovery places the traces at 50 million to 100 million years before the “Great Oxidation Event.” This event happened between 2.3 billion and 2.4 billion years ago, when most geoscientists think atmospheric oxygen rose sharply from very low levels. The amount of oxygen before that time is uncertain – and controversial.

After analyzing layers of sedimentary rock in a core sample 1 kilometer long from the Hamersley Basin in Western Australia, the researchers report finding evidence that a small but significant amount of oxygen – a whiff – was present in the oceans (and possibly Earth’s atmosphere) 2.5 billion years ago. The data also suggest that oxygen was nearly undetectable just before that time. Their findings appear in a pair of papers in the Sept. 28 issue of the scientific journal Science.

“We seem to have captured a piece of time before the Great Oxidation Event during which the amount of oxygen was actually changing – caught in the act, as it were,” says Ariel Anbar, an associate professor in ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration, and the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Anbar, a biogeochemist, led one of the teams of investigators and participated in another team led by Alan Jay Kaufman, an associate professor of geology at the University of Maryland-College Park. The collaborators analyzed a drill core for geochemical and biological tracers representing the time just before the rise of atmospheric oxygen.

The project brought researchers together from ASU and four other major research universities, including the University of Maryland, the University of Washington, the University of California-Riverside and the University of Alberta. It received financial support from the Astrobiology Drilling Program (ADP) of the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), and logistical support from the Geological Survey of Western Australia.

Drilling deep into time

In the summer of 2004, as part of the Deep Time Drilling Project of the ADP, the scientists bored into the geologically famous Hamersley Basin in western Australia, extracting a core of sedimentary rock 908 meters (about 3,000 feet) long from underground. The drilling was led by research team member Roger Buick, a professor at the University of Washington, who developed the idea for the project with Anbar and others as part of the NAI’s “Mission to Early Earth” focus group.

“The core provides a continuous record of environmental conditions, analogous to a tape recording,” Anbar says.

Because it was recovered from deep underground, it contains materials untouched by the atmosphere for billions of years.

After retrieval, the scientists sliced the core longitudinally, leaving half archived at the Geological Survey of Western Australia. The other half – the working half – is housed in laboratories at ASU.

Anbar and his ASU research group – including doctoral student Yun Duan, and assistant research scientists Gail Arnold and Gwyneth Gordon – began an analysis of selected bands of the late Archean Mount McRae shale found in the upper 200 meters of the drill core. They were analyzing the amounts of the trace metals molybdenum, rhenium and uranium. The amounts of these metals in oceans and sediments depends on the amount of oxygen in the environment.

Using state-of-the-art facilities and instruments in ASU’s W.M. Keck Foundation Laboratory for Environmental Biogeochemistry, Anbar’s group took rock samples from the core and pummeled them to powders, dissolved the powders in acid and vaporized the acid solutions for analysis, using an inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer.

Their goal was to characterize the nature of the environment and life in the oceans leading up to the Great Oxidation Event. But they were not expecting much from this particular stretch of core.

“We expected these analyses to be boring,” says Arnold, who also participated in the research led by the University of Maryland’s Kaufman, studying the chemistry of sulfur from the same samples.

As Anbar explains: “The Maryland group started their analyses first, because they were eager to try out a new method they had just developed. They began seeing funny variations in the chemistry of sulfur along this stretch of the drill core. Yun sped up our research to see if we found variations in metal abundances in the same places – and we did.”

“Instead of it being boring, we found this big change,” Arnold says.

Finding evidence of oxygen some 50 to 100 million years earlier than what previously was known was unexpected, Anbar says.

‘Just’ before the Great Oxidation Event

For the first half of Earth’s 4.56-billion-year history, the environment held almost no oxygen, other than bound to hydrogen in water, or to silicon and other elements in rocks. “Then, some time between 2.3 and 2.4 billion years ago, oxygen rose sharply in the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans,” Anbar says. “We call this the ‘Great Oxidation Event.’ ”

The event was a big step in Earth’s history, but its cause remains unexplained. How did Earth’s atmosphere go from being oxygen-poor to oxygen-rich? Why did it change so quickly? And why did its oxygen content stabilize at the present 21 percent?

“Studying the dynamics that gave rise to the presence of oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere deepens our appreciation of the complex interaction between biology and geochemistry,” says Carl Pilcher, director of the NAI. “Their results support the idea that our planet and the life on it evolved together.”

One possibility for explaining the findings is that the ancient ancestors of today’s plants first began to produce oxygen by photosynthesis at this time. On the other hand, many geoscientists think that organisms began to produce oxygen much earlier, but that this oxygen was destroyed in reactions with volcanic gases and rocks.

“What we have now are two new lines of evidence for there being some oxygen in the environment 50 million to 100 million years before the big rise of oxygen,” Anbar says.

This discovery strengthens the notion that organisms learned to produce oxygen long before the Great Oxidation Event, and that rise of oxygen in the atmosphere ultimately was controlled by geological processes.

“This knowledge is relevant to today’s global studies of environmental and climate issues, because it helps us understand the interactions between biology, geology and the composition of the atmosphere,” Anbar says. “It also has implications for the search for life on planets outside our solar system because, in the near future, the only way we can look for evidence of life in such far-off places is to look for the fingerprints of biology in the compositions of their atmospheres.”

Adds Anbar: “We are not far off from being able to detect Earth-like planets elsewhere in the galaxy, and eventually we will be able to use telescopes to measure the oxygen content of their atmospheres. If we find that none of them have undergone a Great Oxidation Event, what will that mean about life? Is it inevitable that the evolution of oxygen-producing organisms results in an oxygen-rich atmosphere? Our results indicate that the connection is not so simple.”

“These results are the culmination of a successful effort to recover suitable rock material, and to test hypotheses regarding the evolution of biogeochemical cycles in early Earth, which is largely unknown,” says Enriqueta Barrera, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s Division of Earth Sciences.

The findings from the Anbar-led team are reported in “A Whiff of Oxygen Before the Great Oxidation Event?” Authors on the paper include Duan, Arnold, Gordon, Buick, Kaufman and Brian Kendall, a doctoral student at the University of Alberta who was a visiting graduate student at ASU in 2006. Other authors are Timothy Lyons of the University of California, Robert A. Creaser of the University of Alberta, Clinton Scott of the University of California-Riverside, and Jessica Garvin, University of Washington.

The findings from the Kaufman-led team are reported in “Late Archean Biospheric Oxygenation and Atmospheric Evolution.” Authors include Anbar, Arnold, Buick, Garvin and Lyons. Also, David Johnston, James Farquhar and Andrew Masterson, of the University of Maryland-College Park, and Steve Bates, University of California-Riverside.

Together, these papers provide “compelling new evidence” of early oxygen, Anbar says. The question he now asks is, “Can we find evidence that oxygen was produced even earlier?”

J.R.R. Tolkien may have talked up their hairy feet, but it is the wrists of hobbits – real hobbits, not the ones in the novelist’s Middle-earth – that interest anthropologists.

An international team of researchers has used ASU’s cutting-edge, three-dimensional imaging technology to help crack the mystery of Homo floresiensis, a 3-foot-tall, 18,000-year-old skeleton nicknamed “The Hobbit.”

The team, led by ASU alumnus Matt Tocheri of the Smithsonian Institution Human Origins Program and ASU doctoral candidate Caley Orr of ASU’s School of Human Evolution and Social Change, used techniques developed at ASU’s Partnership for Research in Spatial Modeling (PRISM) to better place the hobbit on the human family tree. The research was published in the Sept. 21 issue of the journal Science. The work at PRISM was funded by a 3DKnowledge grant from the National Science Foundation.

Four years after they were first discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores, the dozen hobbit skeletons continue to generate heated debate among researchers. Although the skeletons have skull and jaw features similar to modern humans, and the overall structure of creatures that clearly walked on two legs, researchers differ on how best to interpret them.

It is clear that hobbits are a type of hominin – a fossil relative more closely related to humans than to chimpanzees – but while some consider them the bones of a different species of early human, others think they are remnants of a closed community of modern humans with a shared genetic defect or growth disorder.

When the Flores material was first released, they named this new species Homo floresiensis based on a number of features of the cranium and the mandible (jawbone) and its very small stature,” says Orr, who also works in ASU’s Institute of Human Origins. “It had some links in terms of the cranial shape with Homo erectus, an earlier species of hominin, but it’s since been challenged by a number of groups saying, ‘Well, its possible you could explain many of these features as the result of some kind of pathology – microcephaly, and some kind of syndrome that might cause dwarfing.’ ”

Tne approach to answering that question, and to nailing down just where in evolutionary history the hobbit belongs, is to look at the wrist bones.

Modern humans and our closest fossil relatives, the Neanderthals, have wrists that are quite different in shape from those of living apes, older fossil relatives like Australopithecus, or even the earliest members of the genus Homo.

As graduate assistants at ASU, Tocheri and Orr developed a large database of three-dimensional laser scans of primate wrist bones using PRISM. They also developed techniques for comparing the three-dimensional structures of the bones, clustering them into groups such as “great apes” or “modern humans.” Determining which group, if any, the hobbit bones belonged to was simply a matter of getting a hold of some casts of the bones in question, scanning them and comparing them to what they already had.

That is where serendipity stepped in.

While attending a lecture at the Smithsonian Institution by the chief preservationist of the hobbit bones, Tocheri was offered the opportunity to see casts of the skeleton’s wrist.

"Up until then, I had no definitive opinion regarding the hobbit debates,” Tocheri says. “But these hobbit wrist bones do not look anything like those of modern humans. They’re not even close.”

After receiving consent from the research team, Tocheri contacted Orr so that they could pool their data and make the comparison. Just as they suspected, the hobbit bones were nearly indistinguishable from those of an African ape or early hominin-like wrist – nothing at all like wrist bones found in modern humans and Neanderthals.

More importantly, the findings supported the conclusion that hobbits are indeed a branch of early human and not modern humans with some kind of pathology. According to Orr, wrist disorders, even genetic ones, cannot account for such a striking match to early hominin-like wrists.

“Because the development of the wrist bones is so early and the types of pathologies that the critics have talked about tend to occur later on in the development of an individual, it becomes very difficult for pathology to account for a wrist looking the way it does in the hobbit,” he says. “And although there are certainly pathologies that can affect the wrist, it would be highly unlikely that they would produce the anatomy that we are seeing.”

The overall skeletal features of the hobbits, combined with Tocheri and Orr’s wrist analysis, also provides valuable clues as to how long ago the hobbit split from the human family tree.

Humans and Neanderthals share a common ancestor with “modern” wrist bones dating back to about 800,000 years ago, so anthropologists can say with confidence that the hobbits predate that ancestor. Unfortunately, they cannot bracket the dates beyond that, because of a lack of wrist material from other early hominins such as Homo erectus.

Still, the finding, by providing some confirmation of the human ancestor hypothesis, could cause quite a stir in the Shire, as Tolkien might say.

“I think it will make an impact because there are a lot of people who hadn’t made up their minds about the Flores material,” Orr says. “The data are good, and they tell an interesting story that people will definitely consider in terms of making up their mind of what the Flores fossils are – whether they are a distinct species or not.”

Nicholas Gerbis, ngerbis@asu.edu
480-965-9690
ASU Media Relations

The development of the United States’ legal system, from the 12th to the 21st centuries, will be examined this fall during the annual meeting of the American Society for Legal History, conducted by ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law.

The conference, which takes place Oct. 25-27 in Tempe, will include 34 panels and more than 100 papers on U.S., English, European, Asian and Latin-American legal history from top scholars around the world.

The panels, on topics such as the legal profession, the U.S. Supreme Court, English and European legal history, the legal history of the Southwest, gender and race, intellectual property, constitutional law, and law and literature, will be presented Oct. 26-27 at the Tempe Mission Palms Hotel, located at 60 E. Fifth St. in Tempe.

In addition, professor Paul Brand, senior research fellow and academic secretary at All Souls College, University of Oxford, will give the plenary address Oct. 26. Brand will present “Thirteenth-century English Royal Justices: What We Know and Do Not Know About What They Did” in the College of Law’s Great Hall. He is the world’s leading scholar in early, medieval English legal history, says Jonathan Rose, a professor and Willard H. Pedrick Distinguished Research Scholar at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law.

“It’s a significant honor for the law school to host this conference, which is the biggest of its kind in the world,” says Rose, the co-chair of the program committee and chairman of the local arrangements committee. “The intellectual quality of this annual meeting is extraordinary and tremendously varied, and most of it will be interesting to lawyers because it gives insight into the development of legal institutions and documents, both in the Anglo-American legal system and those in other parts of the world.”

The event is expected to draw an international audience of 300 people, mostly professors at law schools and history departments from around the country, Israel, South America, Germany and England, as well as lawyers, judges and private scholars. It will offer a rich program of historical and cutting-edge legal topics, including:

• “American Indians and the Federal Government,” chaired by ASU’s Peter Iverson. Panelists are Kevin Gover, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law; Bethany Berger, University of Connecticut; and Christian McMillen, University of Virginia.

• “Making Places, Making People: The Legal History of the Southwest,” chaired by John Reid, New York University. Panelists are Allison Tirres, De Paul University; Laura Gomez, University of New Mexico, and Tom Romero, Hamline University.

• “The Dred Scott Case at 150: Politics, Law and the Competing Constitutional Histories of Slavery,” chaired by Michael Les Benedict, Ohio State University. Panelists are Mark A. Graber, University of Maryland School of Law; Ariela J. Gross, University of Southern California School of Law, and Daniel W. Hamilton, Chicago Kent College of Law.

Registration is $100, $15 for students with current identification and $25 for the annual lunch Oct. 27. For more information about the ASLH and the conference, visit the Web page www.aslh.net or send an e-mail to jonathan.rose@asu.edu.

ASU’s Center for Responsible Leadership has formed partnerships with three Valley health care organizations to offer a “Leadership Certificate for Health Care Professionals” program designed specifically for front-line health care managers and featuring the state’s first dual-faculty format.

Joining in the certificate program are Abrazo Health Care, Banner Thunderbird Medical Center and Sun Health.

“This is an opportunity for health care professionals to gain an even greater understanding of the industry, its work force issues, improved customer satisfaction measures, team motivation and more,” says David Waldman, director of the center at ASU’s West campus. “This program sets itself apart from any other such program in the state with the dual-faculty element we offer. It assures a balanced, cutting-edge leadership approach and thinking that is grounded in real-world practices.”

Each of the seven certificate courses includes instruction from a faculty member of the center or ASU’s School of Global Management and Leadership, as well as a working health care executive from one of the three partner organizations. The four-hour modules are highly interactive and are limited to 25 students each.

Courses during the seven-week program (Oct. 5-Nov. 16) include case studies, exercises and learning modules designed for the adult learner.

Students can complete five of the seven courses to earn a certificate.

“This is a program that will benefit managers in the health care industry who are intent on improving their leadership skills, and in doing a better job in the profession, which can translate into better patient care, better patient satisfaction,” says Waldman, a professor of management at ASU who is nationally known for his work in the area of strategic leadership processes and their effect in the workplace. “We saw a need for this type of a program in our many discussions and interactions with health care professionals. Our focus will be on service, not only to the patients, but also across departments.”

Among topics that will be explored are taking leadership to a higher level, understanding one’s strengths and weaknesses, making customer satisfaction a priority and a reality, making the correct ethical decisions, and becoming a more effective negotiator and manager of conflict situations.

“We’ve had a wonderful mix of students in the past, which leads to great exchange and the sharing of ideas,” Waldman says. “By presenting leadership lessons and applications for successful and powerful leadership qualities, the program caters to the needs of health care executives and managers and those who want to take the next step forward.”

Registration information is available by calling (602) 543-6201, or by visiting the Web site www.crl.asu.edu. Registrants who complete the certificate program also will receive two continuing education credits from ASU’s School of Extended Education.

The words “complexity” and “sustainability” haven’t commonly been associated with one of the fastest-growing economies in the world – China, to be exact – but that is changing.

About 1,400 environmental scientists and policy-makers from 70 countries gathered at the EcoSummit 2007 in Beijing earlier this year to discuss such issues and the challenges of global warming and ecosystem degradation.

Taking part in the discussion was James Collins, the Virginia M. Ullman Professor of Natural History and Environment of ASU’s School of Life Sciences, and assistant director for the biological sciences at the National Science Foundation (NSF). Collins delivered the opening plenary lecture “Ecology in the 21st Century: Where Do We Go From Here?”

Looking ahead is exactly why this veritable “Who’s Who” of environmental science was staged in China.

The idea of the EcoSummit – just the third since 1996, and the first to be held in Asia – is to “encourage integration of the natural and social sciences with the policy- and decision-making community, develop deeper understandings of complex ecological issues.”

EcoSummit 2007 reflected the belief that international collaboration is fundamental to developing sustainable solutions to this century’s ecological global challenges. Challenges also included “human well-being in the context of the United Nations’ ‘Millennium Development Goals.’ ”

Understanding the complex relationships between humans, plants, insects, microbes and soils is at the heart of one such collaborative research effort between U.S. and Chinese scientists in the grasslands of Inner Mongolia.

Collins visited the the Inner Mongolia Grassland Ecosystem Research Station (IMGERS), which is the study site of ASU ecologists Jingle Wu and James Elser, professors in the School of Life Sciences. Their work there, Elser says, is an outgrowth of another NSF-funded scientific exchange program – one he led organized around “Ecological Complexity and Ecosystem Services,” with Zhibin Zhang, director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Zoology, that brought more than a dozen U.S. scientists to China, including Wu, and Chinese scientists to ASU in 2004.

The Ecosystem Research Station, established in 1979, is considered the most influential long-term ecological research site in China, Wu says. This ASU-China collaborative is supported by $1.2 million in funds from the NSF and an additional $2.3 million contributed by the Chinese National Science Foundation (NSFC). Its aim is to develop understanding of and improve management practices in this semi-arid ecosystem, one of the largest natural grasslands in the world.

In addition, this research effort is expected to provide significant educational, cultural and research experiences for U.S. and Chinese students, and will help establish “a long-term scientific platform in the Inner Mongolia Grassland for U.S.-China collaborations on ecological research, particularly in biocomplexity, and sustainability science for years to come.”

“Collins’ visit to the Inner Mongolia Grassland Ecosystem Research Station, was indicative of NSF’s global vision for scientific exploration and genuine efforts to promote international collaborations,” says Wu, who also is a member of the Global Institute of Sustainability at ASU and recipient of the 2006 American Association for the Advancement of Science International Science Award for his leadership in sustainability science, in addition to “his careerlong involvement with landscape ecological research in China.”

Wu, an adviser to the President’s Office on China Affairs at ASU, says that the impact of Collins’ visit to China was “substantial, creating a wave of positive reactions” from scientists and leaders from Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who administers the Ecosystem Research Station, and other institutions in Beijing, including the Chinese National Science Foundation.

ASU Biodesign Institute researcher Charles Arntzen has been doubly honored by the White House and the American Society of Plant Biologists for his leading role in science policy, and for his lifetime contributions in research and teaching.

Arntzen, a Regents’ Professor who also holds the ASU Florence Ely Nelson Presidential Chair in Plant Biology, has provided expertise and national service since 2001 on the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST).

Arntzen was part of a six-member panel that met with President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Energy Sam Bodman in the Oval Office to present a report on the nation’s energy needs, and new technology options to meet them. Arntzen had contributed to the report’s emphasis on biofuels as an alternative to imported petroleum.

In the report, PCAST recommended an increase in federal support for science and technology research and development, noting that many of the advanced technologies described had originated from federally funded research.

“PCAST has concluded that of all the emerging technologies studied in this report, biofuels offer the greatest promise for advancing, in the relatively near term, the twin goals of reducing oil dependence and significantly reducing carbon emissions from the transportation sector,” according to an excerpt from the report.

The report, which can be viewed online at www.ostp.gov/PCAST/PCAST-EnergyImperative_FINAL.pdf, also included the following overarching recommendations:

• Promote the Energy Policy Act of 2005 incentives.

• Support state energy initiatives.

• Position the federal government as an early adopter of new technology.

In addition, Arntzen was selected by the American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) to receive the inaugural “Fellow of ASPB” award. The award is granted in “recognition of distinguished and long-term contributions to plant biology and service to the society by current members in areas that include research, education, mentoring, outreach and professional and public service.” Arntzen received the ASPB award in a ceremony in Chicago July 7.

Tim J. McGuire, the Frank Russell Chair for the Business of Journalism at Arizona State University, is launching a blog on the business of journalism and media ethics.

McGuire, the former editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune and past president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, joined the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication as the Russell Chair in August 2006.

He will write two to three times a week on trends in the newspaper and media business and reflect on his efforts to convey the challenges of the rapidly changing news industry to tomorrow’s journalists.

“Tim McGuire draws on his years of experiences as a national newsroom leader to provide invaluable insights into the news business,” said Cronkite Dean Christopher Callahan. “His analyses are blunt and realistic about the serious problems facing the news industry today, yet he retains a thoughtful optimism and belief that smart, passionate and dedicated people can help find solutions to these very real problems.

“I have no doubt his blog will quickly become a ‘must read’ for news industry leaders around the country.”

The blog, “McGuire on Media,” is available at: http://cronkite.asu.edu/mcguireblog.

Tim McGuire, the Frank Russell Chair in the Business of Journalism at the Cronkite School, was the keynote speaker for the Arizona Newspapers Association annual meeting and fall convention.

Other Cronkite faculty led sessions and participated in panel discussions on topics ranging from computer-assisted reporting to managing a newsroom.

The convention brought together hundreds of editors and publishers from around the state each year for a professional development program and to recognize outstanding journalism work. The focus of this year’s convention, held Sept. 20-22, was “Today’s New Media.”

McGuire, former editor and senior vice president of the Minneapolis Star Tribune who now teaches at the Cronkite School, opened the conference on Sept. 22 with a speech on the financial climate for newspapers and how smaller newspapers are faring better than most. The title of his talk was “Whales & Little Fish: A Deep Water Phenomenon.”

Other Cronkite speakers included:

• Steve Elliott, a former top editor for The Associated Press who directs the Cronkite News Service, leading a group of students each semester who report on public policy issues in Arizona. Elliott conducted a session for editors on how to get the most out of inexperienced reporters.

• Steve Doig, professor and Knight Chair in Journalism and a nationally recognized expert in computer-assisted reporting. Doig led a workshop on using technology to improve news reporting.

• Kristin Gilger, assistant dean of the Cronkite School and a former editor at The Arizona Republic. Gilger led a session on “How to Manage Your Boss.”

• Assistant Professor Carol Schwalbe, a former editor at National Geographic who teaches magazine writing and online media. Schwalbe was part of a panel discussion on video reporting, blogging and using the Web in reporting.

 The conference was held at the Chaparral Suites Resort in Scottsdale. 

The Stardust Foundation awarded a $510,000 grant to the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University to fund a groundbreaking outreach initiative to create high school journalism programs in underserved communities in Arizona.

Ten Arizona high schools will be selected to participate in the Stardust High School Journalism Program. The Stardust program will create multimedia newsrooms in each school and help teach journalism advisers and students about the skills and values of journalism.

The Stardust Foundation is a non-profit corporation founded by Jerry Bisgrove in 1993. Headquartered in Scottsdale, the foundation is designed to selectively provide grants to organizations that impact the linked concepts of family and neighborhood stability. 

“Stardust values the opportunity to expose more students to careers in journalism,” Bisgrove said. “The communication skills they will learn in this program will be useful to them, regardless of their chosen profession. In today’s fast-paced, information-driven world, effective communication is vital to achieving success in all facets of one’s life.”

ASU President Michael Crow applauded Bisgrove and the Stardust Foundation initiative.

“ASU is committed to making a difference in the lives of our community members, and the Stardust High School Journalism Program is certain to make a lasting impact on the lives of the participating students,” he said.

The Stardust High School Journalism Program is believed to be the first university-based initiative in the country to create newsrooms in high schools, according to Cronkite School Dean Christopher Callahan.

Callahan said that while studies show high school journalism students do better in both high school and college, many high school journalism programs have fallen by the wayside, the victim of budget cuts and other priorities. The problem, he said, is particularly acute in schools with large minority populations, which are the least likely to publish student papers.

The media industry also has a stake, Callahan said. A majority of journalists became interested in the profession through exposure to their high school newspapers, so reaching minority and underserved students early will eventually create a larger pool of candidates for media companies.

“High school journalism programs provide students with opportunities to improve their writing and interpersonal skills and give school communities a forum for news and exchange of ideas,” Callahan said. “We are enormously grateful to the Stardust Foundation and Jerry Bisgrove for providing the leadership to help create these programs in underserved schools.”

The Stardust initiative is part of a broader Cronkite School effort to reach out to high schools. The school recently hired a new director for high school programs, Anita Luera, a longtime journalist and past president of the Arizona Latino Media Association.

For the first time this summer, the school hosted the Reynolds High School Journalism Institute, a two-week fellowship program for 35 high school journalism instructors from around the country. Each year the school also hosts two daylong workshops for students interested in journalism as well as two summer journalism institutes that bring high school students to campus for a two-week immersion experience in journalism.

Schools interested in participating in the Stardust program should contact Luera, the school’s director of high school programs, at 480.965.5477.

In a unique collaboration between academic and practicing legal communities, Catherine O’Grady, a professor at ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, is spending six months of a research sabbatical at the Arizona attorney general’s office, working with the solicitor general’s office.

She will concentrate primarily on brief writing for cases in the Arizona and U.S. Supreme Courts, while also designing supervisor training and CLE programs.

“I wanted to work on the front lines of the profession, which I haven’t done since I started teaching 16 years ago,” O’Grady says, “and I wanted to do something very different – something I’d never experienced before.”

With the help of a couple of mentors, she came up with the plan to work at the attorney general’s office, then write about her experience.
Attorney General Terry Goddard said the arrangement provides benefits for both sides.

“Part of professor O’Grady’s sabbatical is researching how to better prepare law students for the practice of law,” Goddard says. “The attorney general’s office has the widest variety of practice of any legal organization in the state.

“For our part, it allows our practitioners to talk to somebody of very significant knowledge. For instance, she recently helped us with a commerce clause issue that came up in an important case. She knows more than anybody else in the office about that and gave us good guidance.”

The workload was one of the attractions for O’Grady.

“It’s the largest law firm in the state,” O’Grady says. “There’s an amazing amount of work and unique challenges. I want to make a connection between those challenges and what we do in law school.”

Goddard says O’Grady’s professional competence and positive personality makes a difference wherever she goes, and that her arrival at the attorney general’s office has sparked great enthusiasm.

“We have a lot of lawyers who are ASU grads and have had professor O’Grady,” Goddard says. “They know her and respect her and are excited to work with her.

“She came to the new attorney orientation last week, because technically she’s just starting as an employee. You could just feel the buzz. It was palpable.

“Five of the 25 new lawyers at that session had taken classes with her and the idea that Professor O’Grady would be part of their peer group was exciting for them.”

Goddard says he and Patricia White, dean of the College of Law, have discussed ways for the two entities to collaborate, but that it has been decades since a professor actually worked in the attorney general’s office.

“Getting a leading professor? It’s been 30 years,” Goddard says, referring to the time ASU law professor Jonathan Rose worked for then-Attorney General Bruce Babbitt.

“That was in 1974-1975,” Goddard says. “Professor Rose reformed the offices’ antitrust function and wrote what became the state procurement code.”

O’Grady will work closely with Solicitor General Mary O’Grady – a classmate, not related, whose similar name has caused confusion over the years.

“She used to get my e-mails,” Mary O’Grady says. “People would tell my husband, ‘I saw your wife on Horizon.’ Someone would say, ‘I hear you gave a student an extension on a paper.’ I’ve been getting credit for Cathy’s good work for years.”

Mary O’Grady says she is thrilled to have Cathy O’Grady in her office, and that she will help with many efforts they haven’t had the resources to deal with.

“In the solicitor general’s office, we review filings to help improve the writing and the legal arguments,” Mary O’Grady says. “It’s an arm’s-length review, from a bit more distance. She will review everything we file at the state Supreme Court, work with the criminal appeals section looking at briefs we previously haven’t had the resources to review, and review our U.S. Supreme Court filings.”

Mary O’Grady says the lawyers in the office are excited about having a law professor look at their work.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity to write a better brief, to improve the quality.”

Cathy O’Grady says she loves the work.

“This is great work,” Cathy O’Grady says. “I have six giant case files scattered all over my desk right now. I’m doing more front-line legal research now than in a long time, and I’m doing it myself instead of reviewing a student’s research.

“I’m doing more persuasive advocacy writing. And I’m reading a lot of case files to get up to speed on issues. I am also enjoying meeting new people – the attorneys here are smart, hard-working and really happy with their choice to be at the AG’s office. When they talk about their cases, they just smile. I’m having fun.”

Judy Nichols, judy.nichols@asu.edu

The ASU women's basketball team has finalized its schedule for the 2007-08 season. The 29-game regular season schedule includes the following highlights:

• The Sun Devils will be playing 18 games in Wells Fargo Arena this season, including a pair of exhibition contests against the USA National Team (Nov. 8, 6:30 p.m.) and the Chinese National Team (Nov. 15, 6:30 p.m.)

• ASU will officially open its regular season on Sunday, Nov. 11 when faces the North Carolina Tar Heels in the State Farm Tip-Off Classic in Chapel Hill, N.C. The game (scheduled to begin at 12:30 p.m. locally) will be televised to a national audience by ESPN.

• In addition to its contest against North Carolina on ESPN, the Sun Devils have five other games - vs. USC (Dec. 30), vs. Stanford (Jan. 20), vs. Oregon (Feb. 2), at Stanford (Feb. 16), vs. Washington (Feb. 24) - aired to a national audience by Fox Sports Net.

• For the second time in three years, the Sun Devils will be traveling to Mexico for a Thanksgiving-week tournament. ASU will meet Iowa (Nov. 22) for the first time in program history and one day later will meet the Oklahoma Sooners. The Sooners have won both the Big 12 regular season and postseason championships each of the last two seasons. The two games are part of the Caribbean Challenge, which will be played in Cancun.

• On Nov. 30 and Dec. 2 the Sun Devils will be hosting the Verizon ASU Classic. This year's field includes Auburn, Gonzaga and UC Riverside. ASU's first round matchup against Auburn will be its first ever meeting against the Southeastern Conference school. A potential day 2 opponent for the Sun Devils is UC Riverside. Last March the Sun Devils staged a furious second half comeback to get past what proved to be a very formidable Highlander squad in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

• On December 13, the Sun Devils will travel to Lubbock Texas to take on Texas Tech. The game be a rematch of last season's outdoor contest played at Chase Field in Phoenix which was won by ASU 61-45. The game was called with less than five minutes remaining after rain began to fall.

• For the second consecutive season, the Sun Devils will be hosting Sparky's Kids to College Field Trip Day when they host Fresno State on Dec. 17 at 11 a.m. Last season, more than 5,000 fourth-, fifth- and sixth-grade students from around Maricopa County attended ASU's 92-52 win over UCLA. The event is a community outreach initiative designed to expose elementary-aged children to a university campus and intercollegiate athletics.

• The Texas Longhorns will be coming to Wells Fargo Arena on Dec. 20 for what figures to be an exciting non-conference matchup.

• The Sun Devils kickoff Pac-10 play on Dec. 28 when they host UCLA

Stay tuned to thesundevils.com throughout the season for more exciting announcements about upcoming promotions and special events taking place at ASU Women's Basketball home games throughout the season.

Students will be getting “something far beyond traditional job placement” from the new Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering Career Center, says Robin Hammond.

“This is about giving students the tools to develop clarity for a vision for their vocations and their lives,” explains Hammond, director of the center that opened its doors at the start of the fall semester.

The center’s programs are being designed to prepare students to be top candidates for internships and full-time employment.
Coaching, counseling, career fairs and job-search training will be among services the center provides. But it will offer much more than merely a basic advisement service.

“We want to help students map out how they can get the most out of their investment in higher education,” Hammond says. “Our goal is to create a platform from which they can put themselves on a pathway to career success.”

The new center is to be a driving force in fulfilling the School of Engineering’s mission “to provide each student with the opportunity to individualize their education,” says James Collofello, associate dean of the school’s Office of Academic and Student Affairs.

Hammond comes to the School of Engineering after 14 years of experience in career services at ASU, where she rose to assistant director of the university’s career services.

She decided to take the job with the Engineering Career Center “because of the commitment to growth and excellence I saw from the school’s leaders,” she says, “and I was inspired by Dean (Deirdre) Meldrum’s intention for the school to have a global impact.”

The College of Nursing & Healthcare Innovation has launched an interdisciplinary initiative with the formation of the Center for Healthcare Innovation & Clinical Trials (CHI&CT) to help bring innovative health care products to market.

The center is in partnership with InnovationSpace, an ASU entrepreneurial joint venture with the College of Design, the Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering, and the W. P. Carey School of Business and Arizona Technology Enterprises (AzTE).

The purpose of CHI&CT is to teach students how to develop products that create market value while serving real societal needs and minimizing impacts on the environment. The clinical trials initiative is funded by the Kauffman Foundation’s “University as Entrepreneur” program as part of a five-year grant to ASU.

Linda Mottle, a clinical associate professor at the college, has been named director of the center. She has more than 30 years experience in the health and clinical research fields as an administrative manager, nursing clinician and organizational leader, specializing in health program and clinical research development, in addition to intensive cardiac care.

“This innovative center will serve as the focal point among biotechnical organizations, health care institutions and clinical researchers,” says Bernadette Melnyk, the college’s dean and a Distinguished Foundation Professor in Nursing. “It will attract scientists and health care practitioners who have innovative ideas for products to improve health care, but who need assistance in actualizing their ideas through design, clinical trial testing and taking their product to market. Unique to this center is the clinical trials component, which will allow gathering of solid evidence to support product use for sustained solutions in health care institutions.”

The center also will have an educational component where interdisciplinary students can learn the process of translating innovative ideas into the design and testing of new health care products and approaches. Specifically, the CHI&CT has developed a new graduate certificate that has been submitted to the university for approval.

It is anticipated the 15-credit-hour graduate certificate for clinical research management will be approved to be offered in January. The center also will offer an interdisciplinary master’s degree in clinical trials management, and pre- and post-doctoral mentor programs for research scientists at a later date.

ASU entrepreneur initiative

“This initiative advances the ASU entrepreneur initiative by launching an innovative center, which to our knowledge, is the first of its kind in the country,” Mottle says. “It will create a national hub for clinicians, scientists, and collaborating health care institutions and community partners to advance health care through the creation of evidence-based innovative products and approaches that improve the health care system and create a cadre of interdisciplinary innovators, which the field urgently needs.”

The center already has conducted a low-risk clinical trial on a cardiographic impedance device approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Center looks at health care needs

One of the challenges in the medical technology industry is that most new technologies do not result in obvious gains in mortality or morbidity, so that it is important to demonstrate improvements in quality of life and economic advantages, Melnyk says. More health care providers and payers want to see evidence of effectiveness in community settings rather than just efficacy in the carefully controlled settings that characterize data gathering for purposes of regulatory approval. The College of Nursing & Healthcare Innovation has the infrastructure in place to conduct these specific types of trials and product assessments in collaboration with its health care institutional partners.

The new center plans to work with interdisciplinary ASU scientists and community health care institutions and practitioners, biomedical and biotechnical professionals to deliver breakthrough medical inventions that can eliminate the potential for errors, improve the quality of health care delivery and save lives. Equally important, the next wave of medical technology innovation will address the cost effectiveness concerns that pervade government and society and will seek to meet the growing needs of an increasingly well-informed patient population that demands more effective, more efficient and less-invasive treatment options.

Health care networks and community biotechnical partners

The ASU nursing faculty and college’s new master’s degree in health care innovation program provide existing collaborations with numerous health care institutions and medical product developers and a long history of substantive research in health care process, evidenced-based practice, nursing process and clinical research. Current clinical research projects generally evaluate already developed and FDA-approved products.

The College of Nursing & Healthcare Innovation operates five community-based health centers and an advanced student clinical simulation lab that provide an extensive internal network of clinical trial sites. The nurse-managed centers include the ASU Health Center on the Downtown Phoenix campus that provides services for 6,800 ASU students and employees, thus giving the college direct access to potential test subjects.

Mottle says the college plans to expand the types of clinical trials and clinical research opportunities with many of the more than 400 health care institutions in Arizona that are contracted clinical educational sites for nursing students and also provide additional external clinical research sites and cooperative efforts for clinical trial through extensive health care institutional and clinical research networks.

The College of Nursing & Healthcare Innovation is ranked in the top 8 percent, or 32nd out of 396, of graduate colleges of nursing by U.S. News & World Report. Its pediatric nurse practitioner program was listed 13th in its peer group in the same survey rankings.

The college has an enrollment of more than 1,800 students and more than 7,600 graduates.

For information on the CHI&CT, visit the Web site http://nursing.asu.edu/chict or call (602) 496-0684.