Crow congratulates faculty, staff on ASU's 'most successful year'

ASU President Michael Crow congratulated ASU faculty and staff for their contributions at the April 29 Employee Recognition Celebration. Crow said this year was "ASU's most successful year to date."

Compared to 10 years ago, ASU is seeing twice as many students graduate and is producing four times the amount of research.

Watch President Crow’s speech.

This year, "ASU is graduating more than 18,000 students at the highest level of academic capability," Crow said. "Among universities without medical schools, ASU is the fourth-most significant inventor of things."

Crow said that the university was able to accomplish so much, without increasing its workforce, because ASU's talented faculty and staff were able to increase their productivity relative to two of ASU's principle products: people and new ideas. ASU saw no reduction in performance through the recession, he said. "We saw enhanced creativity, enhanced innovation, enhanced capability.

"ASU is mastering technology so that it can be used to enhance educational outcomes, to enhance learning outcomes, to lower cost, to continue to provide for accessibility, and to do all of that with profit not being our objective," he said.

"Our objective is the education of the student; our objective is the production of the master learner; our objective is the development of the new idea, and the creation and the maintenance and the development of the environment where we do those things. All of you are a part of this.”

Employee Recognition Celebrations recently took place on all ASU campuses for faculty and staff. The annual event is just one component of the university’s Employee Recognition Program.