Leveraging Place
From its home base in the heart of the Valley of the Sun, ASU faces many of the same challenges and opportunities that the Phoenix metropolitan area and the rest of the Southwest do. We are in a desert with a booming population. As a sizeable public institution, ASU has the power to bring critical issues facing the community and the region to light. Phoenix and Arizona are our classrooms, our focus of research. Local issues become tangible examples of concepts discussed in lectures and the university shares knowledge directly with the sites that it studies. In this way, place becomes an integral part of the educational experience and ASU energizes the search for sustainable, environmentally conscious solutions to local problems.
“If I was going to describe New American University in one word…”