A chat with MIT, ASU presidents


two men sitting

At Arizona State University's Undergraduate Commencement on Monday evening, Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Rafael Reif told the Class of 2018 that they now had the ability and responsibility to hold open doors that will allow others to pursue an education and better themselves.

Before Reif's remarks at Chase Field in downtown Phoenix, he and ASU President Michael M. Crow sat down with Adriana De Alba, who graduated this week from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at ASU, for a wide-ranging interview that included discussion of what each institution does to provide access to higher education and what the two university presidents admire about their colleague's institutions.

De Alba started with a topic that ties the three of them together: what it was like to be the first in their families to go to college and how that has affected their leadership at two of the world's most innovative universities.

Providing access to higher education

Mutual admiration society

Full interview

Videos by Deanna Dent and Jamie Ell.

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