Arizona State University

Local high school students are getting a jump start on college, through an ASU partnership that allows them to take courses from ASU professors while still in high school. Nearly 100 high schoolers have taken Engineering 101 and 102, criminal justice, economics and other college-level courses over the past two years.

The Collegiate Scholars program was started two years ago as part of Access ASU, to increase the pipeline of Arizona students who attend ASU.

Students must be top high school seniors who meet requirements to attend the university, and who are interested in an ASU course that is connected to a major or career. The courses are taught by ASU faculty, for university credit.

Last fall, high school seniors took an engineering class after school at Desert Vista High School twice a week from professors Mark Henderson and Bob Hinks, getting to explore hands-on engineering. They designed and built their own rockets and computer-controlled robots.

Students from other high schools also enrolled in an engineering class at the Polytechnic campus this year, as well as a criminal justice class at the West campus.

“It was fun, not like a typical class,” says Brian Gobster, a 2008 Corona del Sol High School graduate who took the Polytechnic engineering class and is enrolled at ASU for the coming fall. “We built a rocket and a robot, so we used our academic skills.

“I thought taking the class would help integrate me into the college setting, so I wouldn’t be overwhelmed my first year. I’ll have about 14 hours of college credit when I start ASU this fall, with this program and my dual credits.”

Crystal Castro, who graduated from Maryvale High School in May, was intimidated when she enrolled in the criminal justice class at West last spring, but now feels more confident about attending ASU this fall. She is the first in her family to attend college.

“The course was pretty challenging, but I got through it,” she says. “Now I know what to expect. I got to know the other students, and I enjoyed the class. It sets me apart, having some college credit. I feel better about coming to campus.”

The cumulative grade-point average for their ASU coursework to date is 3.37. Three-quarters of the students have since gone on to ASU and maintained a GPA of 3.3.

“This gives students the chance to experience the academic rigor of a university, and to make an easier transition to college,” says Antonia Franco, director of Access ASU. “They can see the wealth of opportunities ASU offers, meet other students and feel engaged and a part of the university.

“It also allows colleges to showcase their top programs in a meaningful way to high school students. Once students have a first-hand experience in the discipline, they can select a major with more certainty.”

Brianna Burns, who just completed her freshman year at ASU, took Engineering 101 and 102 at the Polytechnic campus before graduating from Dobson High School.

She says the ASU courses were challenging but “extremely fun,” and they solidified her choice of an engineering major.

“The courses were extremely helpful in teaching students how to work in teams, and the importance of teamwork in completing complex projects,” Burns says. “If I was still in high school I would love the opportunity to take more ASU classes offered by the Collegiate Scholars program.”

Anna Battle, principal at Desert Vista, was instrumental in bringing the program to her high school last year, along with Desert Vista technology chair Dan Zavaleta. The two even worked with ASU to create a pre-engineering course, to prepare their top students for the rigors of a college class. Next fall Desert Vista will host another ASU engineering class, and may open it to students from other high schools.

“This is the very beginning of what we hope to be a huge relationship with ASU,” says Dr. Battle. “We’re in the baby stages, but we want to see it grow. We’re excited about the possibilities.

“It’s a new type of partnership, one that benefits our students and our teachers. We’re looking at working with other units at ASU, to give opportunities to all types of kids.”

Gov. Janet Napolitano and the Arizona Legislature demonstrated their continued support for the state university system during a difficult budget process. While the 2009 state budget signed into law Friday, June 27, includes a $50 million operating budget reduction for the state universities, it supports $1 billion in infrastructure investment.

“We are very grateful to the legislature and the governor for continuing their investment in ASU with an appropriation that is both substantial and appropriate considering what an extraordinarily difficult budget year this has been,” ASU President Michael Crow said. “We are also very appreciative of the infrastructure funding provided in the state budget that will be used to renovate buildings badly in need of repair.”

The two important investments in ASU will enable the university to meet the challenges of educating Arizona’s rapidly expanding population, stimulating the state’s economy, and helping solve the many human health and environmental problems the state and the nation face.   

Like all state-funded agencies, ASU will have to make significant budget cuts but has have been preparing for the possible cuts for months and will be able to continue its core educational mission without any reduction in quality.

The new budget includes the University Infrastructure Economic Stimulus package supporting $1 billion in capital financing for construction at the state universities. The stimulus plan will finance critical building maintenance at the universities, construction of much-needed new facilities and the completion of the Phoenix biomedical campus.

The capital construction plan will help boost the state’s economy in two ways: in the near-term by giving a boost to the construction industry and, long-term, by allowing the state universities to accommodate growth and increase the number of qualified graduates in the Arizona job market.

The Arizona Board of Regents will apportion the cuts to the individual universities and approve the operating budgets soon. The regents also will approve the time frame for the capital construction plans. 

A documentary produced by students in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication has won two awards for excellence in national and international competitions.

The documentary, “Holy Hunger in the Midst of Plenty,” follows Muslim students at Arizona State University as they observe Ramadan, a month-long religious observance emphasizing prayers, fasting, charity and self-examination. The 15-minute student documentary, produced by students Jamie Murdick, Stjepan Alaupovic and Zabihullah Noori, won a 2008 Bronze Telly Award as well as a Videographer Award of Distinction.

The Telly Award is one of the most prestigious awards given for video and film production as well as television programs and commercials and work created for the Web. Productions in more than 200 categories are judged on their individual merits, and the best are given Silver or Bronze awards.

The Videographer Awards is an international awards program to honor talented individuals and companies in the video production field. Entries number in the thousands from all 50 states and multiple countries. The Cronkite School documentary, entered in the “Produced by Students” category, received the organization’s highest award.

Murdick, Alaupovic and Noori, all recent graduates of the Cronkite School, created “Holy Hunger in the Midst of Plenty” last year while students in Professor John Craft’s documentary production class.

Craft said that Noori, a graduate student at the time and a Muslim, was interested in how Muslim students try to adhere to their faith and still fit into a secular culture at ASU, especially during Ramadan. The idea grew into a semester-long team project.

“They told the story very well, and in today’s world, this is an important story,” Craft said.

Cronkite students also recently finished ninth in the national Hearst Journalism Awards for 2007-2008 – the seventh consecutive year that the school has finished in the top 10.

More than 100 accredited journalism schools from around the country compete each year, entering their students’ best work in monthly competitions for radio and television news, multimedia, photography and writing. Schools are ranked at the end of the year based on points awarded in the monthly contests.

This year, Cronkite students placed in every category, taking sixth overall in broadcast news, seventh in multimedia, 13th in photography and 17th in writing in the awards that are often called the Pulitzers of college journalism. Cronkite student Bonnie Bolt was selected to participate in the Hearst national championships earlier this month. It is the fifth time in the past six years that a broadcast student from the school has been selected for the championships, which bring top journalism students from around the country to San Francisco to test their skills in an intensive, week-long face-off. Bolt, who graduated in May, was the winner of a $1,500 scholarship.

The annual Hearst Journalism Awards Program was established by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation in 1960 to provide support, encouragement and assistance to journalism education at the college and university level. The program distributes more than $550,000 in scholarships and grants annually.

The following is a complete listing of Cronkite Hearst winners for the year:

Television News Reporting
Bonnie Bolt, Mesa, Ariz., fourth
Michelle Ashworth, McLean, Va., fifth

Radio News Reporting
Dana Granillo, Phoenix, 11th
Sam Eshelman, Carlsbad, Calif., 14th

Radio Feature Reporting
Sam Gavin, Newark, Ohio, 14th

In-Depth Reporting
James Kindle, Riverton, Wyo., second

Feature Writing
Celeste Sepessy, Goodyear, Ariz., eighth

Multimedia
Annalyn Censky, Tucson, Ariz., seventh

Photojournalism, Picture Story Series
Deanna Dent, Tempe, Ariz., 11th

Photojournalism, News & Sports
Deanna Dent, Tempe, Ariz., 17th  

It began two years ago as a handshake idea connecting a pair of criminal justice schools some 2,500 miles apart. Today it links students, faculty, and research centers in a partnership designed to develop cross-country criminology programs, enhance research efforts, and strengthen ties between academia and practitioners.

The partnership program between Arizona State University’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice and the City University of New York’s (CUNY) John Jay College of Criminal Justice will foster the sharing of best practices in a wide range of areas between the two schools, including areas of similarity, as well as those unique to each.

“This creates a bi-coastal effort to inform such criminal justice issues as immigration and border security, street gangs and violence, and offender re-entry programs,” says John Hepburn, dean of ASU’s College of Human Services where the School of Criminology and Criminal resides. “John Jay is among the best in the country at educating, training and working with criminal justice professionals, and this partnership offers us the opportunity to merge our areas of expertise to service a larger and more complex community.”

“Both ASU and John Jay have dynamic, rapidly expanding faculties and large, diverse student bodies,” says John Jay College Dean of Research James Levine. “As a result, this partnership has endless possibilities for our students, faculty and research centers.”

The cross-country link between the two criminology schools brings together a wealth of resources. ASU’s criminology school boasts an interdisciplinary approach to understanding issues related to policing, corrections, juvenile justice, terrorism, drug use, and other issues in criminal justice. John Jay College has earned a global reputation in the fields of applied criminal justice and international criminal justice. The two campus communities share commonalities and differences, which brings greater significance to the cooperative program, according to Karen Terry, an associate professor in the Department of Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration at John Jay.

“Faculty have similar goals and research interests, and this can lead to collaboration on serious research projects between the universities,” says Terry, who also is the executive officer of the doctoral program in criminal justice of The Graduate Center, CUNY at John Jay. “Both faculty and students are grappling with the same issues, but from a different perspective. So, students at both universities will study police leadership, and to fully understand this issue, it would be important to study the benefits and challenges to both centralized and decentralized police forces.

Scott Decker, director of ASU’s nationally ranked criminology school and a recent appointee to Governor Janet Napolitano’s Arizona Peace Officer Standards and Training board of directors, says the differences will create opportunities for faculty and students.

“Our international experiences are different from each other, there are differences in the border issues we deal with, and there different kinds of diversity,” he says. “Each of these areas brings with it challenges and prospects for learning. The information exchange and the communication necessary for success is a critical component in the more spread out, diffused Phoenix metro area as well as in the dense, highly concentrated area of New York City.”

In addition to student and faculty exchanges between the two schools, the partnership calls for the beginning of a public safety leadership training program directed by John Jay faculty for the benefit of top law enforcement personnel locally and across the state. The first such seminar is an upcoming three-day academy to be held at the West campus this month under the direction of Ellen Scrivner, director of the John Jay Leadership Academy. The reality-based learning experience will serve as a template for future seminars conducted by a proposed Institute for Policy Leadership and Training in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice.

“We hope to develop more of these innovative partnerships, not only in the United States, but internationally as well,” says Decker, who will travel to the Netherlands this summer to explore the possibility of establishing a similar faculty-student exchange program with VU University of Amsterdam. “There are lots of areas in which we can work together and learn from each other. The Dutch model of international and comparative criminal justice is one that holds a great deal of interest.”

Exchange programs involving students also are already under way. In April, 10 master’s students and one undergraduate traveled from Phoenix to spend a week at John Jay, visiting a local jail and a diversion court, and attending seminars and classes. One month later, 10 students from John Jay came to town and made trips to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Douglas, a medium-security prison facility in the central part of the state, the Tents Jail (known locally as “Tent City”) adjacent to the Maricopa County Jail in Phoenix, and attended a “Violence in America” seminar hosted by the school.

“ASU has a very impressive faculty and a model criminal justice department, and it provides a good model for our students to follow,” says Terry. “The promising aspect of the partnership is the possibility of developing further collaborations with research, professional development seminars and workshops, and continuing the exchange programs for students and faculty. Both institutions are set to gain a wealth of knowledge from the other, as our strengths complement each other.”

Arizona State University undergraduate Rebecca Raub was one of just a handful of students to present their work at the 2008 American College Health Association’s annual meeting June 3-7 in Orlando, Fla.

Raub discussed ASU’s meningitis vaccination program during a talk entitled, “Collaboration with a Student Group on a Voluntary Meningitis Vaccination Program.”

“Her presentation really stimulated interest in what a student group that is committed to campus health could accomplish. Of the 235 faculty presenters at the meeting, Rebecca was one of only 14 students chosen to present their work,” says Dr. Allan Markus, Director of the ASU Campus Health Service and Raub’s co-presenter.

The importance of vaccinations in the battle against meningitis was brought to the attention of ASU students last year through the Health and Counseling Student Action Committee. The committee helped to raise awareness of meningitis vaccinations, assisted in the development of forms to track data and increased the percentage of vaccinations given by the ASU Campus Health Service by more than 60 percent. Raub is chair-emeritus of the committee.

“I couldn’t be more proud of the success of our meningitis vaccination program this year. All the Health and Counseling Student Action Committee members and volunteers made a huge impact on our vaccination rate,” Raub says.

An article entitled, “Improving Vaccination Rates in States and Universities without Mandatory Vaccination Policies,” written by Markus and Raub was published this spring in the national American College Health Association newsletter.

Raub is going into her junior year at Arizona State University in the fall. She is currently majoring in molecular biosciences and will pursue a career in medicine after she graduates.

The incoming president of the Health and Counseling Student Action Committee group, Jelena Peric, also attended the meeting and will coordinate this year’s efforts on improving health and counseling care for ASU students.

“I’m the straw that stirs the drink.”
– Reggie Jackson, former New York Yankees superstar, 1977

It may be a stretch to compare a million-dollar, high-profile slugger like Reggie Jackson with a bespectacled, nose-in-the-books library liaison like Dennis Isbell. Then again, maybe not.

Jackson, an Arizona State University alum drafted in the first round of Major League Baseball’s 1966 draft by the old Kansas City Athletics, carried his teammates to four World Series championships with his towering homers, his flair for the dramatic, and his braggadocio. Isbell, a Phoenix Maryvale High graduate who earned his bachelor’s and master’s in English from NAU and a master’s in library science from the University of Arizona, has quietly helped ASU students and faculty reach for the stars with his expert research assistance, his crisp knowledge of literature, and his ability to deliver specialized help.

He is one of 10 librarians with liaison responsibilities at Fletcher Library on ASU’s growing West campus. According to library director Marilyn Myers, every faculty member has a liaison librarian he or she can turn to for help. Isbell, who began his work at Fletcher Library in 1991 – just four years after its dedication – is a liaison librarian specializing in the humanities and fine arts.

“After a faculty member assigns a research paper, I can tell you that a whole new level of instruction starts, and the librarian must often start at a basic level – helping the student define and focus a topic,” says Isbell, who chairs a cross-university team of librarians that is working on a standard approach and curriculum for library instruction to first-year students on all four ASU campuses – West, Tempe, Polytechnic and Downtown. “I think many faculty members would be surprised to learn how much instruction we deliver to students one-on-one at the library reference desk, and that it is often more than how to use library resources or track down items in the library.”

Just as Jackson could hit the fastball, the “crooked pitch,” and even the occasional change-up, Isbell hits it out of the park for students by sticking with four liaison strategies he outlined recently in an article published in College Teaching, a noted cross-disciplinary journal focusing on how teachers can improve student learning. Included on the list: assist the student to define his or her assignment; assess the student’s knowledge of the topic and summarize for the student the stage of research at which he or she is; conduct a database search and collaboratively examine and discuss search results, looking for a possible focus; and question the topic with the student to assist in focusing it.

“A great provider of research, and Dennis is a great example, is a person who knows the literature of his or her assigned field and keeps up on what’s new,” says Myers, who has been with Fletcher Library since its inception. “The liaison librarian is a great teacher and mentor who can put a frustrated student or faculty member at ease, is a great listener and never preaches, and exercises great patience. This person crafts effective teaching tools and practices the principles of good pedagogy.”

Students seek out Isbell or his peers in other specialized subjects because they are new to the particular discipline they are studying and may be inexperienced in doing the research. The liaison librarian can help a student formulate a viable, researchable question; understand how the literature of a particular discipline is structured; identify the key tools; learn how to search those tools; and, finally, how to evaluate the information they find.

“Dennis and his colleagues provide students with the skills to be successful in completing research assignments and successful in completing a course of study and graduating,” says Myers.

On the faculty side, professors and their research assistants may need help because new information sources are constantly emerging, or they are researching a new or interdisciplinary problem. Instructors may need help identifying and acquiring specialized material. The assistance provided is a critical component in the completion of research work and the publishing of scholarly articles and books, which, in turn, contributes to national recognition and the research missions of their academic departments.

“There is a lot of variety in my research assistance with faculty,” says Isbell. “This year, two notable areas I have assisted faculty with include researching Irish literary figures and identifying resources for the ethics of biotechnology. A lot of the research assistance I do with faculty members is often assisting them in tracking down difficult to identify or track down items.”

While busy assisting students and faculty in research areas, Isbell and the rest of the Fletcher Library liaisons – like Jackson before them – are keeping their eye on the ball.

“Changes in technology have dominated the field of librarianship, and we are stilly trying to figure out the implications and what the field will look like in the future,” Isbell notes. “The library as a place is changing, since so many of our collections are online, making a visit to the library no longer as necessary. We are considering the best ways to reach students who may not ever visit the library and inform them of our collections and their value, and how to tailor our services to the new online environment.

“Librarians are also very interested in how the online environment itself is changing how students find, interact with, and use information. Online research requires a whole ne way of thinking about information and research.”

“What do hippopotami and medical students have in common?”

Rebecca Fisher makes you want to ask questions. Not just about why there is the huge hippo skull on her desk or what the stuffed raccoon-like creature above her keyboard is, but deeper queries about species evolution and how one short career can span the study of large semi-aquatic animals closely related to whales (yes, whales) to empowering future physicians.

Fisher is an assistant professor in Arizona State University’s School of Life Sciences and the department of Basic Medical Sciences at the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix in partnership with Arizona State University.

It is Fisher’s out-of-the box scholarship, as well as her creative course development and teaching of anatomy, which garnered her the coveted Basmajian Award from the American Association of Anatomists; an award that recognizes exceptional health science faculty who are in the formative stages of their career.

Fisher teaches two anatomy courses at the College of Medicine-Phoenix. According to her, most medical school anatomy courses are fairly encyclopedic, presenting “a lot of detail without necessarily a lot of clinical correlations.” In addition, the hours dedicated to anatomy courses have declined dramatically in recent years. So when offered the challenge of developing her own anatomy course for first-year medical students, Fisher took a fresh approach. She rooted her class entirely in clinical practice, rejected the traditional stand-alone lectures, and decided to hold all sessions in the lab.

“When I was designing this course I asked, ‘is this relevant to the practice of medicine or laying the foundation for the practice of medicine?’ Fisher also considered where she had learned best and what she had enjoyed most when she took anatomy classes as a graduate student at Yale.

“Anatomy lectures are good for learning terminology, but the light bulb never really goes on until you go into the lab,” she says.

So Fisher’s course is entirely based in the lab, with plasma screens next to the cadaver tables: “The idea was when they were learning about the anatomy, they could look at the cadaver, real time. There wasn’t that delay between the lecture and the lab setting.”

Fisher describes her mixed modality lab-based teaching as “a guided tour in the lab.”

“We often had little exercises, where I would ask, ‘if your patient has X- clinical condition, which procedure would you recommend? Simulate that on the cadaver.’ They’d argue amongst themselves, give me an explanation, a foundation for a procedure and doing it a certain way,” says Fisher. “They could see; this is why I’m learning anatomy and basic science and why it is relevant.”

It was this hands-on, clinically oriented, entirely lab-based study that grabbed the attention of the Basmajian Award committee, along with her incorporation of active and retired clinicians in the labs. Fisher invited specialists who were tied to whatever body region she and her students were studying, so students could then ask an experienced practitioner questions pertinent to that body region.

Fisher’s colleague, Kenro Kusumi, who co-teaches a musculo-skeletal class with her, believes that "true to the spirit of creating a new medical campus in Phoenix, Rebecca has created a dynamic and interactive clinical anatomy course lauded by the inaugural class of medical students and faculty who had the pleasure of participating or observing the class."

Agreeing is Stuart Flynn, associate dean of academic affairs and professor at the UA College of Medicine-Phoenix in partnership with ASU.

“Fisher’s work is truly pioneering and sets an example for others to follow,” says Flynn.

Fisher’s research has also captured attention in other ways. Some of the special delivery packages Fisher receives border on the macabre; gory, but highly instructive remnants of carnivores and artiodactyls (even-toed ungulates, like deer) that died of natural causes in zoos. She dissects out, literally, answers to evolutionary puzzles haunting their history and relationships within the mammalian family tree.

Fisher examines modern mammals’ muscles and constructs maps that document their attachments to bones. She then compares these modern muscle maps to correlates in fossil species. She has worked up muscle maps for common and pygmy hippos, sun bears, red pandas (a carnivore that is an herbivore, with a pseudo-thumb, but unrelated to giant pandas), and binturongs (a carnivore with a prehensile tail).

What seems like a strange assortment of unrelated mammalian species with enigmatic evolutionary histories do in fact have connectivity for Fisher:

“Not many people work on such disparate groups of mammals, but to me they seem very similar, in terms of the hypothesis and the theoretical framework of the question. I like working on animals with unresolved phylogenies,” Fisher notes. “I also enjoy working on functional anatomy, particularly adaptations to different behaviors as reflected in the musculoskeletal system. That is the common thread.”

Hippos have been a passion since she was a graduate student studying primate anatomy. She worked with Andrew P. Hill, a professor of anthropology at Yale, and curator of anthropology in the Peabody Museum. On their first field trip to Kenya, she discovered not only a passion to do field work, but was also unexpectedly drawn to hippos and the questions that surround their prehistory.

“I still remember my first night at camp and seeing my first hippopotamus. Common hippos are huge, fascinating looking creatures, like a sausage with legs. We’d camp by a lake and in the evening, they’d come up onto the land and feed at dusk and on into the night.

“I started picking up hippo fossils when we’d go out, prospecting for them while everyone else looked for primates,” Fisher muses. “I guess what struck me most was how understudied hippos are. Sure, they are in zoos and popular with the public. However, in terms of their anatomy and their evolution, there wasn’t a lot of research going on.”

She adds, “That was a very exciting thought as a graduate student.” Fisher makes hippos seem convincingly attractive. Semi-aquatic sausages with legs they might be, but by some accounts they also kill more people than any other mammal in Africa, are related to ancient whales, and lack sweat glands, Hippos also are a keystone species, which means that while they are fascinating and peculiar creatures, they are also crucial to the sustainability of their environments.

“Hippos create their own little ecosystems,” she notes. “And they poop a lot.”

What National Geographic correspondent and scientist Brady Barr termed their “explosive fecal discharge” provides a food source for a plethora of species. There are also different types of birds and fish that feed off the parasites of hippos and clean their wounds. “Without hippos, lakes become stagnant. The food source is gone,” Fisher notes.

Hippos are also instrumental in the physical movement of lake and riverbed sediments and establishing healthy aquatic water systems, according to Fisher. “I had never thought about how these large mammals affected their environments in these fundamental ways.”

It was her move to the College of Medicine-Phoenix in 2006 that allowed Fisher to bring all of her passions together and maximize her own footprint, from hippos and basic research in evolution, to mentoring ASU undergraduates, to teaching anatomy to medical students.

“I realized early on in graduate school that I really wanted to teach med students; that I wanted to make a contribution that was palpable, not esoteric. Training people to save lives is very rewarding to me. But it can be hard to fit in at most biomedical institutions with my other interests in mammals.”

Being associated with a new college is “really exciting,” Fisher says.

Some 31 faculty members form the backbone of the College of Medicine-Phoenix. Fisher is one of 10 from ASU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; seven of whom have appointments in ASU’s School of Life Sciences. Fisher is also a research associate in the Division of Mammals at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution.

As an anthropology undergraduate, turned paleoanthropology doctoral student, turned functional anatomy post-doctoral fellow and finally, assistant professor of anatomy, Fisher offers this advice to students who are trying to find their path: “The number one thing is discovering what gets you excited. Be a sponge and try as many different disciplines as possible.”

On the strength of three national championships and eight total Top 10 national finishes this year, the Arizona State University athletics department has finished fourth in the 2007-08 U.S. Sports Academy Director’s Cup standings that were released by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics (NACDA) June 26. The Cup standings reflect each university’s success in collegiate athletics throughout the academic year and are used to determine the top overall collegiate athletics programs in the nation each year.

"The 2007-08 year has been a most exciting season for us at Arizona State University," Lisa Love, Vice President for University Athletics, said. "I could not be prouder of the student-athletes and coaches who competed at such a high level for our university. Their accomplishments have brought great prestige to our university and our community. We compete in such a prolific conference, the Pacific-10 Conference, in which we won five conference titles. We also won three national championships. I am so proud of the great work going on within our athletic family."

With 1,146.00 points, the Sun Devils claimed their first placement among the Top 5 in the Cup standings for the first time under the current NACDA formula, which was started in time for the 1993-94 academic year, and surpasses the previous top finish of ninth place in 2000-01. ASU was the third-highest finisher this year among Pac-10 schools with Stanford (1,461.00) winning the Cup and UCLA (1,182.00) placing second. Michigan was third (1,154.00)

The Sun Devils earned 100 points each from the softball, men’s indoor track & field and women’s indoor track & field squads this year after each won national titles. The women’s outdoor track & field team (second), the women’s cross country team (fourth) and the women’s golf team (fifth) each earned Top 5 finishes to help the Sun Devils climb the charts. Overall, 18 of the department’s 22 teams scored points toward the Cup with half of the teams securing more than 60 points each

Following the fall, the Sun Devils stood 28th overall with 165 points as women’s cross country (80), football (63) and men’s cross country (22) each scored. The winter saw seven of the school’s eight eligible teams score points to bring the overall total to 612 points and push the department to ninth overall. In the winter, the indoor track teams picked-up 200 total points while swimming combined for 113 (57 for women and 56 for men). Also adding to the total included women’s basketball (50), wrestling (45.5) and gymnastics (38.5).

In the spring, eight of the nine eligible teams scored 25 or more points, including the national champion softball squad (100) and fellow Top 10 finishers women’s track & field (90 points, second), women’s golf (75, fifth), men’s track & field (73.5, sixth) and baseball (64, ninth). Adding to the totals were men’s golf (56.5), women’s tennis (50) and men’s tennis (25).

The Cup was started in the early 1970’s by the Knoxville Journal with the newspaper awarding points based upon finishes in the national meets and tallying three standings: men, women and combined. Under that format, ASU climbed its way into the Top 5 on several occasions as a combined program, finishing second in 1981 after placing third in 1976, 1977 and 1978. When USA Today took over compiling the numbers in the late 1980’s, the Sun Devils finished in the Top 10 on several occasions as a combined program with their highest finish coming in 1990 when they finished fourth after the men were fourth and women fifth in their separate divisions.

Professor Noel Stowe is being honored for his outstanding achievements in preserving Arizona’s historic resources through the public history program he guides at Arizona State University. He received the 2008 Governor’s Heritage Preservation Honor Award and was recognized June 13 at the Arizona Statewide Historic Preservation Partnership Conference.

“Noel Stowe has worked tirelessly as a public historian to preserve historic documents, archives and monuments. His knowledge and commitment have helped Arizona preserve its heritage,” says Deborah Losse, dean of humanities in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. “The award is a well-deserved recognition of his contributions.”

Stowe was nominated for the honor by William Collins, deputy state historic preservation officer. Collins, an ASU alumnus, earned a bachelor’s degree in history and economics in 1986, a master’s degree in economics in 1990 and a doctorate in history in 1999.

“The Governor’s Heritage Preservation Honor Award will be presented to Professor Noel Stowe in recognition of his years of service as founder and guiding spirit behind the ASU Department of History’s Public History Program,” Collins says. “Over the years, this nationally recognized program has graduated numerous public history and historic preservation professionals who now apply their knowledge and skills across the country, in academia and outside, to promote public appreciation of our shared cultural and historic heritage.

“The public history program at ASU is a valued partner in the efforts of the State Historic Preservation Office and other preservation organizations in ensuring that history students enter the professional world with both sympathy for historic places and a resume of the highest professional skills and knowledge,” Collins says.

Stowe began his ASU career in 1967 as an assistant professor in the department of history. His areas of expertise are public history, the Southwest, Mexico and Latin America.

He served as chair of the department from 1998 to 2007. Stowe also served as senior director of the graduate program in public history from 1980 to 2007. Previously, he was associate dean of ASU’s Graduate College from 1991 to 1994 and 1995 to 1996.

Stowe earned a bachelor’s degree in history and social studies in 1963 and a doctorate in history in 1970 from the University of Southern California.

A prolific author, Stowe’s book, “Arizona at 75: The Next 25 Years,” was published by the Arizona Historical Society with the ASU Public History Program. The book was part of the program’s cooperative project with the Arizona Historical Society to commemorate Arizona’s Diamond Jubilee with assessments by leading historians and to provide recommendations on preserving Arizona’s historical documentation. Stowe’s other publications include “Accountancy in Arizona” and “California Government: The Challenge of Change.”

Stowe has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Park Service, American Historical Association, and Arizona Humanities Council.

A member of the Arizona Historical Society Museum, Stowe also serves on numerous boards in Arizona and its communities. He has served on committees of the Arizona Historical Advisory Commission (Arizona Centennial), American Historical Association, and Organization of American Historians. He is a committee member of the American Association for State and Local History and the National Council on Public History.

In 2004, Stowe received the Friend of the Humanities Award from the Arizona Humanities Council. The same year he was bestowed the Gary S. Krahenbuhl Difference Maker Award from the ASU College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. In 2007, he received the James V. Mink Oral History Award in Recognition of Outstanding Contributions to Oral History in the Southwest from the Southwest Oral History Association.

Since 1982, the Arizona Heritage Preservation Honor Awards annually recognizes 10 people, organizations and projects that represent outstanding achievements in preserving Arizona’s prehistoric and historic resources. The awards are sponsored by the Arizona Preservation Foundation and the Arizona State Historic Preservation Office, a division of Arizona State Parks.

Potential risks from the use of nanomaterials will be explored by three Arizona State University engineering faculty in a project supported by a $400,000 grant from the U.S.Department of Energy Office of Biological and Environmental Research.

Nanomaterials are becoming more prevalent in our lives each day. These are particles of less than 100 nanometers – less than one one-thousandth the width of a human hair – composed of metals, carbon, polymers or semiconductors. They are increasingly used in clothes and cosmetics, plastics and cleaning solutions, skin lotions and bandages.

Nanoparticles offer an array of benefits. They have been found to effectively improve methods of cleaning up water pollution. They are helping produce medical advances by acting as carriers of medicinal drugs to specific parts of the body for fighting cancer. They are used to strengthen plastics and rubber, to make clothing more durable, sunscreen lotions more protective and antibacterial solutions more potent.

But while the properties of nanoscale materials can improve such products, there’s growing concern about the impact of some nanoparticles when they find their way inside our bodies or out into the environment.

“We are exposed to engineered nanomaterials through our skin, eyes, nose and mouth. They get transported into waterways and soils. And we are just not certain if they are detrimental in any way,” explains Jonathan Posner, an assistant professor in Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the Department of Chemical Engineering in ASU’s Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering.

Posner’s partners in the research project are Paul Westerhoff, professor and chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Trevor Thornton, professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering.

They will examine how and where nanomaterials get transported and what environmental and biological risks the materials may pose.

“This research will provide government and industry policy makers essential information to arrive at prudent decisions about the safest ways to regulate, handle, dispose of and manage nanoscale materials in the environment, as well as the potential for using nanomaterials in medical therapies,” Posner says. “To the best of our knowledge, there is no research currently addressing these specific issues.”

The effort will require gaining an understanding of how nanomaterials are partitioned, or separated, particularly in liquids, and how to precisely measure the partitioning and model the process.

For an analogy of this type of partitioning, Posner says, think of salad dressing.

“If you shake up Italian salad dressing, you mix together oil and water and spices. But if you let the dressing sit a while, the oil and water separate into phases. The oil moves to the top and the water to the bottom because they are immiscible [incapable of being mixed] and have different densities. So then where do the spices go?” he says.

“A question like that is important when considering the fate and transport of nanomaterials in the environment and the human body. Partitioning is basically a measure of where the spices go – into the oil or the water,” Posner explains.

“For instance, partitioning determines where nanomaterials end up in the body, such as in the in the blood, kidneys, brain or in fat tissue,” he says. “In the environment, one would be concerned with what fraction of the nanomaterials ends up in the waterways, soils or biomass. Partitioning measurements are typically made for pesticides and pharmaceuticals before they are mass produced, so that we can better understand where they end up.”

Thus with the rising use of nanomaterials, he says, “We need to be able to predict their fate, to know how they might break up and how and where they get transported.”

There are particular questions about the interaction of nanoparticles with human body cells. Some particles may tend to gather on the protective membranes that wrap around the body’s cells. There is concern that the particles could weaken the membrane, causing it, in effect, to leak and harm or even kill cells. It is also not well understood how, or if, nanoparticles enter cells.

Studies of such possible effects have so far been largely inconclusive and sometimes contradictory, Posner says.

The ASU research project is designed to overcome that problem by devising methods to more closely determine the behavior of nanoparticles. That includes developing microfluidic technologies to measure partitioning, transport and toxicity.

Nanoparticle partitioning experiments will provide a foundation for developing screening tests for environmental toxicology and for predicting the behavior of the particles in the environment and the human body.

The project reflects the complexity of trying to grasp the environmental impact of nanotechnology, says Thornton, who also directs the Center for Solid State Electronics Research at ASU.

“This work combines faculty and student research assistants from three areas of engineering – electrical, civil and mechanical,” he says. “It exemplifies the interdisciplinary knowledge necessary to understand nanotechnology and the kind of collaborative approach to research that is taking place at ASU.”

The project, Posner adds, “will build on the very strong nanotechnology research already going on at ASU.”

A wide range of nanotechnology research includes projects funded by the Environmental Protection Agency focusing on the toxicology of nanomaterials as well as on using nanomaterials to treat water.

A can-do attitude and a genuine desire to help students succeed are qualities Adam Farni brings to his job on a daily basis. As an Arizona State University undergraduate admission counselor, Farni works with community college transfer students to make their transition to ASU as seamless as possible.

Farni’s efforts on behalf of Phoenix College students have earned him a 2008 Golden Bear Award in the category of University Partner. Phoenix College gives the awards to individuals who support PC students, employees, programs, services, and the college community.

“Adam is great,” says Kay Harrison, transfer services coordinator at PC. “He has been very responsive to inquiries from both students and staff. Whenever I have an admissions question, I contact Adam and he quickly resolves the issue.”

“It’s a pleasure to work with the advisors at all of the community colleges,” Farni says. “They want what’s best for their students just like we do.”

From his base on ASU’s West campus, Farni serves as the primary contact and coordinator for ASU Transfer events held at each Maricopa Community College. After such events at PC, Farni provides Harrison with information about the students he has interacted with, including when they plan to transfer and which major they plan to pursue.

“This information makes it easier for my office to show the results and benefits of our transfer events,” Harrison says. “When I refer students to Adam, they always report back about how accessible and helpful he is.”

“The idea of transferring to ASU can be intimidating to some community college students, so I try to be the friendly face they know they can come to for answers to their questions,” Farni says.

Farni’s myriad duties also include responding to community college instructors’ requests to speak in their classes about choosing a major, answering students’ inquiries via phone and email, and attending transfer events at two-year colleges around Arizona.

“Adam takes pride in assuring transfer students they will have a seamless transition to ASU, and he offers his personal assistance with the admission and financial aid process,” says Angela Huizar, coordinator of undergraduate admissions and Farni’s supervisor.

Adds Melissa Pizzo, ASU’s assistant dean of undergraduate admissions, “Adam is a true advocate for transfer students. These students are tremendously important to ASU, and it’s a wonderful honor for Adam to be recognized for his hard work on their behalf.”

Community college students interested in transferring to ASU may find information at http://students.asu.edu/transfer-admission. 

The College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) have announced those athletes earning a place on the ESPN The Magazine Academic All-America teams for men’s and women’s track and field Wednesday with three members of the Arizona State University program earning the national honor, including April Kubishta, who was selected to the first team. Kubishta, who also was voted as the Women’s Track & Field Academic All-American of the Year, was joined by teammates Sarah Stevens and Ryan Whiting, both of whom earned second team accolades.

Kubishta, who carried a perfect 4.00 GPA this year after graduating last year, becomes just the second Sun Devil woman to be named Academic All-American of the Year, following Gea Johnson in 1990, who was selected Women’s At-Large Academic All-America of the Year (CoSIDA did not have a separate track & field division until 2002). The duo join former Sun Devil Casey Myers as the lone Sun Devils earning that distinction as Myers was named the Academic All-American of the Year for baseball in both 2000 and 2001. Kubishta also became just the third track and field athlete at ASU to earn Academic All-America first team honors, joining Johnson in 1990 and Lisa Aguilera in 2001 (cross country).

A senior from Lake Havasu City, Ariz., Kubishta earned a pair of All-America honors in the field this season as she placed second in the pole vault at the NCAA Indoor Championships before taking second at the NCAA Outdoor Championships two weeks ago. The Pac-10 runner-up in the pole vault this season, Kubishta also was honored academically by the Pac-10 Conference (first team) and earned ESPN The Magazine First Team Academic All-District VIII honors as well.

Stevens, the 2007 USTFCCCA Women’s Indoor Scholar-Athlete of the Year, had a productive year as well as the junior claimed the 2008 NCAA title in the discus while also placing third in the hammer throw and sixth in the shot put to earn All-America honors in all three events and help the team to a national runner-up finish. Stevens was an Honorable Mention Academic All-Pac-10 honoree this season after winning the hammer at the Pac-10 Championships and earning All-Region honors in all three throws.

Whiting’s honor as an ESPN The Magazine Academic All-America Second Team honoree makes the sophomore the first Sun Devil male in program history to earn the accolade and just the second male in program history (includes cross country) to garner the award from CoSIDA. The first to do so was Garrett Jensen, who was selected the at-large second team in 2001. Whiting capped his second season with the Sun Devils as the indoor NCAA shot put champion with a collegiate-record toss of 21.73m before finishing second outdoors. Whiting earned All-America honors in the discus as well this outdoor season and was an Academic All-Pac-10 Second Team honoree.

All three honorees, as well as several other current and former Sun Devils, will travel to Eugene, Ore., this weekend to being competing in the U.S. Olympic Team Trials - Track & Field that will be held at Hayward Field June 27-July 6. The Top 3 finishers in each event will earn a place on the U.S. Olympic roster and will compete at the 2008 Beijing Olympics in August.

ASU Track & Field’s All-Time CoSIDA Academic All-America Selections
2008 - April Kubishta - Women’s Track & Field/Cross Country - First Team
2008 - Sarah Stevens - Women’s Track & Field/Cross Country - Second Team
2008 - Ryan Whiting - Men’s Track & Field/Cross Country - Second Team
2005 - Jennifer Kowacz - Women’s Track & Field/Cross Country - Second Team
2003 - Lisa Aguilera - Women’s Track & Field/Cross Country - Second Team
2002 - Lisa Aguilera - Women’s Track & Field/Cross Country - Second Team
2001 - Lisa Aguilera - Women’s At-Large (Track & Field) - Third Team
2001 - Lisa Aguilera - Women’s At-Large (Cross Country) - First Team
2001 - Garrett Jensen - Men’s At-Large (Cross Country) - Second Team
1990 - Gea Johnson - Women’s At-Large (Track & Field) - First Team

Academic All-America of the Year Selections
2008 - April Kubishta (Women’s Track & Field/Cross Country Team)
1990 - Gea Johnson (Women’s At-Large Team)

Future teachers are combining old-fashioned teamwork with cutting-edge technology at Arizona State University’s College of Teacher Education and Leadership (CTEL). Three CTEL professors whose innovative teaching methods aim to produce K-12 teachers who embrace the use of new technologies in their classrooms have received international recognition for their efforts.

CTEL faculty members Teresa Foulger, Mia Kim Williams, and Keith Wetzel received the 2008 Research Paper Award from the International Society for Technology in Education’s Special Interest Group for Teacher Educators. The trio will be recognized during the National Educational Computing Conference, June 29-July 2 in San Antonio.

Foulger, Williams and Wetzel authored the award-winning paper, “Innovative Technologies, Small Groups, and a Wiki: A 21^st Century Preservice Experience Founded on Collaboration.” The publication is based on their experiences teaching CTEL’s educational technology course to education majors who bring a wide range of technology skills to the class.

One of the professors’ key strategies is to have students work in small groups to learn a technological tool and its potential classroom uses. Students then conduct an “Innovations Mini-Teach” session in which they showcase the tool to their peers in a simulated K-12 lesson.

“Students gain a sense of empowerment by working in small, self-directed groups,” Foulger says. “When our students graduate and become K-12 teachers, we want them to use collaborative learning strategies with their fellow teachers as they refine their teaching techniques using new technologies.”

Students were placed in groups of two to four to complete their Innovations Mini-Teach assignments. In many cases, students encountered difficulties with inter-group dynamics, but the vast majority of issues were resolved without intervention by the professor.

“The social side of innovating can be tricky,” Williams says. “As instructors, we see these struggles as learning opportunity for students to develop interpersonal skills – the same skills that can support their professional development processes once they become teachers.”

Besides conducting an Innovations Mini-Teach, students post their findings about technological resources on a wiki, a web site that enables multiple users to create content. The collaborative effort extends over time, as new students refine and add to the wiki each semester, while current and future K-12 teachers can make use of the wiki’s resources.

Student focus groups conducted after the course ended show strong support for the Innovations Mini-Teach process and the benefit of the wiki.

“Most of the student presenters included a tutorial on something like how to put a Podcast together or how to make an iMovie,” said one student who participated in a focus group. “I may not have grasped all of the details at the time, but if I want to use that innovation, I can go back to the wiki and learn it step by step.”

Adds another student, “I expect to be continually accessing the wiki, and if I find information somewhere else that’s worthwhile, I’ll definitely post it on the wiki. Any help I can get is great.”

Wetzel says the exponential growth of new technology tools makes it impossible for the technology class to cover all of those tools. “So it’s important for students to have the confidence to know they can learn new tools and be able to put them to use in their classrooms,” Wetzel says.

Foulger says she has seen many “turning point moments” among students who went into the class without a strong base of technology skills. “Putting them into a situation in which they have no choice but to learn how to use an unfamiliar technology causes them to think differently about themselves. They leave the class ready to continue collaborating to learn new technologies, which will help them succeed as teachers,” she says.

This collaborative use of technology is being expanded to more of the CTEL curriculum this summer. Foulger, Wetzel and Williams are teaching approximately 40 of their CTEL faculty colleagues about social networking tools such as wikis. Participating professors will revise a unit from a course they teach in a way that relies on students’ use of collaborative tools, and student feedback will lead to further curricular refinements in the future.

Faculty members at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas are replicating the teaching techniques described in the award-winning paper, and Foulger says other universities are expected to follow suit as well.

More information about the project and links to wikis constructed by CTEL students and professors are available at http://web.mac.com/teresa.foulger/iWeb/Innovations/Home.html.

It’s not surprising to see stacks of oversized children’s picture books, colorful toys and a bright yellow Big Bird in ASU professor James Christie’s office at ASU. This former kindergarten teacher has dedicated his life’s work to the study of play.

Christie teaches courses in language, literacy and early childhood education in the Mary Lou Fulton College of Education’s Division of Curriculum and Instruction. He recently received the Brian Sutton-Smith Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for the Study of Play. The award recognizes his vastly respected work in this approach to early literacy.

Through his persistence in understanding how children learn language and literacy during playtime, Christie has published numerous articles, co-written books, edited college textbooks and lectured internationally on the role of play in learning.

“I’ve focused my research on how play contributes to children’s early education. It’s somewhat controversial. Some play purists think it’s interfering too much with play,” he says.

He strives to enrich children’s play settings with academic content by developing play-based curricula. Educationally related play takes more planning and interaction by the teacher, Christie says, but the effort pays off.

His research has shown that children learn more about reading and writing with increased teacher involvement during playtime.

“I love watching kids play, and I try to figure out how to take advantage of it from an educational perspective,” he says. “With just a little bit of planning and engineering by the teachers, we can enrich it. I really enjoy getting out and working with teachers. We’re able to bring tremendous resources to the schools.”

“Jim is a wonderful colleague, and his work in the study of play – and the development of play-enriched curricula – has significantly contributed to our understanding of ways to approach learning for young children,” says Maryann Santos de Barona, interim director of the Division of Curriculum and Instruction. “He works tirelessly to provide professional development training for teachers who work with young children, particularly ESL preschool students.”

Christie also is a co-director of the Mohave Desert Early Literacy Coalition Early Reading First project, a three-year, $4.4 million project to improve school readiness for 280 culturally-diverse children in Head Start and Reading First programs in rural public schools. The program will implement Houghton Mifflin’s play-based pre-kindergarten curriculum, Where Bright Futures Begin, in northwest Arizona schools.

For this project, he regularly travels to work with teachers in rural schools in Bullhead City, Mohave Valley and the Fort Mohave Indian Nation, which exhibit pervasive poverty and unemployment and more than a third of the students are English-language learners.
Santos de Barona says Christie and his colleagues developed an impressive collection of video clips to help these preschool teachers learn multiple strategies to teach core pre-reading skills.

“The techniques presented not only are very useful, but also highlight the many ways that children can be easily engaged in the learning process,” she says.

Christie began teaching kindergarten in the early 1970s in Bakersfield, Calif., after getting his undergraduate degree in psychology from University of California Berkeley and his master’s at Syracuse University in New York. He admitted with a chuckle that he only chose to attend Syracuse because it’s where football great Larry Czonka played the gridiron, but there he was first exposed to Swiss cognitive psychologist Jean Piaget’s theories on children’s intellectual development and the relationship between play and cognitive development.

Piaget’s work became the foundation for constructivism, which argues that knowledge is internalized by the learner.

These theories supported what Christie noticed as a kindergarten teacher: Children learn during free playtime. He embraced the theory and infused reading and writing into play as he watched an escalating trend to shorten playtime in kindergarten.

“I became convinced that the kids were learning more in that one hour than any other part of the curriculum,” he says. “If we don’t make connections between play and the academic curriculum, play is going to disappear in preschools. My opinion is that the play gets better if you add reading, writing, math and other academic content.”

In his early research career at the University of Kansas, Christie focused on children’s play and its effect on cognitive and social development.

He later taught courses on elementary and early reading, but it wasn’t until he came to ASU in 1988 that he finally could merge his two academic interests.

“Now I get some synergy between my research and my teaching,” he says.

In 2000, Christie took a sabbatical to pursue science-based reading research, which has since dominated federal literacy programs under the No Child Left Behind Act. The movement uses the best scientific research to guide the teaching of reading, and Christie was caught up in the approach.

From 2003 to 2006, he was co-director of the $3.5 million Arizona Centers of Excellence in Early Education (ACE3) Early Reading First project.

He also helped write McGraw-Hill’s “Doors to Discovery” play-based literacy curriculum, which was used in the project. The vocabulary-building program was tested in Somerton and San Luis, Ariz., where 95 percent of the children speak English as a second language.

“The curriculum connects play activities with books and makes play richer,” Christie says.

In the “Build it Big” unit, for example, the teacher does shared reading using oversized construction-themed books with vivid illustrations of heavy equipment and construction tools. The books expand the children’s vocabulary, introduce shapes, and emphasize safety. Wordless books and learning centers, where the children play at building a house, reinforce the use of the new vocabulary.

“This gave the children a wonderful opportunity to practice and consolidate the skills they were learning in the academic part of the program,” Christie says. “It was really fun making this curriculum, and we tried it out very successfully.”

Christie is publishing an article about the children’s gains in vocabulary and alphabet knowledge using the curriculum with Karen Burstein of Southwest Institute. He also is working with Jay Blanchard, a professor in psychology in education, and Kim Atwill, a researcher at McREL (Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning), to follow the students though school to compare them with other children in traditional Head Start programs.

His expertise in play also has been sought by Fisher Price toys in development of interactive books, which were given to the children in his initial study.

He also worked as an educational adviser for Sesame Street Magazine, and in 2005 he met and worked with Big Bird while working as adviser for the children’s television show.

Verina Palmer Martin, verina.martin@asu.edu
(480) 965-4911
Mary Lou Fulton College of Education

A full enrollment of 30 Arizona high school students and 10 high school teachers will participate in the 2008 Arizona State University Robotics Camp, a summer program designed to excite young students about science through hands-on applications of robotics engineering and programming.

Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, Intel Corporation and ASU’s School of Computing and Informatics in the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering, camp activities will take place from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, from June 23 through July 3.

The camp is part of the engineering school’s contribution to the national effort to interest more students in careers in science, engineering, technology and mathematics.

“We are working in cooperation with the National Science Foundation’s goal to ensure the country produces the top scientists and engineers needed to keep the United Stated a leader in technological innovation and technology development, ” says Yinong Chen, a lecturer in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and leader of the Robotic Camp.

During the camp, Chen will use the intuitive Microsoft Robotics Studio software to engage students, while teaching the latest engineering design concepts and computing technologies. Students will also work with Lego Mindstorm NXT robots, using Lego building-block logic to demystify programming and robotics.

“Teaching Java or C++ [programming languages] in high school is irrelevant,” Chen explains. Rather, he aims to interest young people in engineering and science through an easy-to-use programming interface.

In the Robotics Camp, “we emphasize the logic rather than the syntax of the language. This program is more graphically oriented. “

From 1 to 5 p.m. on July 3, the last day of class, students will apply what they have learned in a Robotics Competition held at ASU’s Artisan Court in the Brickyard complex at Seventh Street and Mill Avenue. They will test the capabilities of robots they have designed, built and programmed by having their robots navigate through a maze, collect balls and complete other tasks to demonstrate motor skill and dexterity.

This year, Chen will be assisted in teaching the program by ASU graduate students Calvin Cheng, Jay Elston, and Larry Xu.

Chen has led ASU robotics teams to championship titles in the Las Vegas Ultimate Architecture Sumo-Robot Competition in 2005 and 2006. He is also organizer of April’s Arizona Robotics Challenge 2008, which pitted ASU and traditional rival the University of Arizona.

The Robotics Camp will be offered again for a fourth year in the summer of 2009. Enrollment is currently capped at 30 students and 10 high school teachers, with a separate course offered to teachers.

For more information about the program, or camps and competitions from years past, visit the program website at http://sci.asu.edu/roboticscamp

Matthew Evans
Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering