Camp ASPIRE returns to empower students with essential life skills

ASU’s Department of Psychology teaches elementary, middle school students how to manage stress and grow in social settings

June 5, 2023

Camp ASPIRE, a virtual summer program at Arizona State University that combines strength-based skills training and engaging activities to empower students and foster the development of essential life skills, is returning for its fourth year.

Led by clinical psychology graduate students, Camp ASPIRE (ASU’s Skills Program Inspiring and Reinforcing Excellence) aims to equip children and adolescents with the tools needed to navigate life’s challenges and embrace their full potential. Through interactive sessions full of activities, collaboration and reflection, participants learn to manage emotions, build social skills and develop problem-solving abilities, all in a virtual setting accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Young women looking at an open laptop screen Led by clinical psychology graduate students at ASU, Camp ASPIRE returns for its fourth year, offering a virtual summer program that equips children and adolescents with the tools they need to navigate life’s challenges. Sessions begin on June 12 and July 10. Photo courtesy Unsplash Download Full Image

“You won’t find a summer camp that has more qualified camp counselors,” said Matt Meier, clinical associate professor and co-director of clinical training. “On top of their expertise, our graduate students are just a bunch of good people. They’re counselors that are excited to be interacting with kids, and they have the skills needed to do so effectively.”

Camp ASPIRE provides students with the tools they need to respond and participate fully in their lives, so that they can show up as the best versions of themselves. It’s not therapy — instead, it’s a program designed to help students from all backgrounds learn to positively approach life experiences and challenges. Programming and activities look different for various ages, and students are grouped accordingly.

Rising third- through sixth-graders make up the younger age group and benefit from research and activities adapted from Associate Professor Armando Pina’s Courage Lab and offshoot programs like COMPASS for Courage. A game-based environment helps children to socialize, better understand their emotions and learn how to handle uncomfortable or stressful situations.

“Think of things like the movie 'Inside Out.' That did a lot of really great work giving personalities to different emotions and helping us see that we all have these emotions inside of us,” said Rana Uhlman, a doctoral student and Camp ASPIRE facilitator. “We build off this idea of characters with the younger group, and we play games that identify the different ways unpleasant emotions like anxiety, anger, worry or fear show up. One of the fun games we play is Simon Says Emotion, where we have campers display what that emotion looks like so they have awareness of the different feelings that pass through their bodies.”

Students are given vocabulary to help describe what they are feeling, and they’re equipped with the skills needed to process emotions like worry. A game called Worry Head is used to teach students how to identify and investigate things that might be causing them concern. Instead of feeling anxious, counselors help students consider alternative possibilities to what a worry might be telling them.

Similar, approachable methods are applied to the older age group, too. Rising sixth- through eighth-graders are encouraged to envision their future and taught problem-solving skills so they can start building the lives they want to live. They learn to be independent and step into their individuality.

“As students get older and are more engaged in social media, they often lose out on social skills like talking directly to people, learning to cope with their emotions and being able to pay attention to what other kids are going through. This program helps them focus on interacting with each other,” Meier said.

Programming is based on Provost Nancy Gonzales’ Bridges Program, an initiative designed to increase grades and confidence among teens while decreasing depressive and anxiety symptoms. Participants learn to create small, achievable goals that contribute to larger aspirations. They are connecting with people their age, finding similarities and working with adults.

Constructed out of necessity during the COVID-19 pandemic, Camp ASPIRE continues in a virtual setting for the benefit of its participants and is not limited to Arizona residents. Campers meet three times per week for shorter bursts of structured time, helping them stay engaged with activities so they stick long after the program ends.

“They’re not spending an entire day zoned into a screen. The bite-sized programming gives students a chance to practice new skills in between us seeing them,” Uhlman said. “We’re able to check in and reinforce these skills as campers build them into their daily lives. We see so much growth.”

Camp runs for two weeks, meeting online from 1 to 3 p.m. Arizona time Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. The program is $100 per child and contains activities akin to previous camp years. Scholarships are available based on financial need. Sessions begin on June 12 and July 10. To sign up, fill out the interest form online.

Laura Fields

Marketing and communication manager, Department of Psychology

Laura.fields@asu.edu

ASU Women and Philanthropy funds 5 projects to 'build better futures'

June 5, 2023

ASU Women and Philanthropy awarded grants to five Arizona State University faculty-led projects aimed at solving complex world issues, ranging from developing electric canoes to addressing the causes of chronic pain.

One of the projects funded is Solar Canoes Against Deforestation, which is led by Janna Goebel, assistant professor of sustainability education in the School of Sustainability and a senior Global Futures scientist in the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory. Goebel and her team are exploring how solar energy could transform how Ecuadorians travel the Amazon River. Five canoes side by side on a river in a forest setting. Canoes on a river in the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve in Ecuador. These are similar to the gas-powered canoes currently used by the Indigenous Waorani community in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Photo courtesy iStock

The Indigenous Waorani community in the Ecuadorian Amazon currently relies on gas-powered canoes, which disrupt the local ecosystem through contamination and cause air and noise pollution.

Goebel and her team are striving to implement an alternative to the gas-powered motor by retrofitting canoes with an electric clean motor.

“Having respectful and reciprocal interactions with Indigenous communities is very important to me,” Goebel said. “It is really important that we work on solutions with them, not for them. We are hoping with this funding that we will be able to implement one functioning prototype electric canoe to provide evidence that this is a viable solution.”

In the future, Goebel and the team hope to scale up the development of electric canoe prototypes, delivering functioning solutions for sustainability to multiple communities.

“The whole process has been incredible,” Goebel said. “When we got the grant, I was so excited. The mentorship we had this entire time has been so meaningful. We felt ourselves grow as scholars throughout the whole process.”

ASU Women and Philanthropy awarded grants to four other projects as well.

Urban food production

The vertical farming education and research project is led by Yujin Park, an assistant professor whose research focuses on horticultural crop physiology and controlled environment agriculture, and Zhihao Chen, an instructor of chemistry and controlled environment agriculture, both in the College of Integrative Sciences and Arts. Their project focuses on revolutionizing urban food production to address the challenges of decreasing freshwater resources and arable lands, rising energy prices and climate change. The team will also focus on developing a food waste fertilizer for production.

Mosquito study

The Mosquitoes in the Sonoran Desert project studies how heat and drought affect mosquito activity and insecticide efficacy. Last year, 60% of all national West Nile virus cases, which are transmitted by mosquitos, occurred in Arizona. The project is led by Assistant Professors Silvie Huijben and Krijn Paaijmans in the Center for Evolution and Medicine.

Reducing chronic pain

The HEAL project is led by Bradley Greger, associate professor in the School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering, and considers the neurological, psychological and situational mechanisms of chronic pain to develop novel nonpharmacological treatments and address the underlying causes of chronic pain rather than attempting to reduce the symptoms using opioids.

Personalized immunotherapy

The cancer immunotherapy project addresses immunotherapy efficacy to reduce adverse effects. Ji Qiu, a research professor in the Biodesign Institute's Virginia G. Piper Center for Personalized Diagnostics, and Jin Park, associate research professor, lead the project to advance personalized immunotherapy for cancer patients using personalized-neo-antigenome analysis.

'Build better futures'

Women and Philanthropy has provided more than $4.5 million to over 100 programs and initiatives in the 21 years since its inception. The group was founded in 2002 with the intention of serving and making a positive impact toward ASU’s collective success as a New American University. The program offers a unique model of philanthropy, pooling philanthropic dollars and letting the donor group collectively decide how the funds are invested at ASU.

Sybil Francis, standing co-chair and founding member of ASU Women and Philanthropy, helped start the initiative in the early days of her service to ASU.

“Women and Philanthropy gathers a community of women philanthropists dedicated to advancing ASU. The grants we fund aim to improve society, increase longevity and quality of life, provide education and resources for underserved communities and, ultimately, build better futures,” Francis said.

Written by Richard Canas

ASU Interplanetary Initiative announces 2nd fellow

Anthropologist to research intersection of space exploration, culture, science and religion

June 2, 2023

For anthropologist John Traphagan, Arizona State University’s newest Interplanetary Initiative Fellow, space is more than the final frontier. It is the opportunity of a lifetime, and the ASU enterprise is the place to explore.

A professor emeritus of anthropology in the Human Dimensions of Organizations program at the University of Texas at Austin, Traphagan has been announced as the second recipient of the fellowship. He joins 2022 fellow Theodora Ogden, a defense and security analyst at Rand Europe. Headshot portrait of John Traphagan. John Traphagan, Arizona State University’s newest Interplanetary Initiative fellow. Download Full Image

“The exploration of space encompasses all different aspects of what humans do,” said Traphagan, who was drawn to ASU by its reputation for innovation and interdisciplinary collaborations. “Everything is there. Engineering, science, medicine. But space also raises the social, cultural, religious and philosophical questions.”

This year, the fellowship — which supports bold interdisciplinary projects and thinkers to further a positive space future — is offered in collaboration with the ASU School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, focusing on projects that address the human, social and cultural implications of exploring outer space.

As a scholar of Japan, Traphagan will explore how the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA's) programs and narratives around space exploration are shaped by Japanese religious ideas. His findings will be included in an edited volume, tentatively titled "Religion and Space Exploration in Cross-Cultural Perspective," and shared as part of a cross-cultural symposium to be hosted in spring 2024. The symposium will discuss how religion, ideology and space exploration intersect in different societies and shape the ways those societies approach space exploration.

“A key goal will be to feature scholars who work on non-U.S. contexts,” Traphagan said, “so that we might explore how these ideas come together in Russia, the (European Space Agency) community, China and India, as well as the U.S."

As more nations from around the globe develop space capabilities, it is more vital to ensure the peaceful and collaborative use of the domain.

“Avoiding conflict in space requires an understanding of how culture, science and religion influence a nation’s political and social ideologies around space exploration and by extension its behaviors in space,” said Jessica Rousset, deputy director for the Interplanetary Initiative. "We believe research such as this is vital to ensuring lasting cooperation in space.”

Widely published, Traphagan received his PhD in social anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh, Master of Arts in religion in social ethics at Yale University, and bachelor's degree in political science at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. At UT Austin, Traphagan teaches coursework in ethics in space exploration; biomedicine, ethics and culture; religion and family in Japan; and multidisciplinary methods in exploring organizations. Now, the fellowship marks another step in what he believes is a natural career progression that mirrors his passion for culture, science and religion.

“We look forward to having Dr. Traphagan engage with our faculty and students and broaden our network of scholars interested in these important topics," said Richard Amesbury, director of ASU’s School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies.

Traphagan’s fellowship will begin in the coming fall semester. As an ASU research scholar, his fellowship puts him in a pioneering space for integrated research and learning, and the opportunity to investigate, communicate and help define humankind’s future in space.

“I’m really impressed with what the Interplanetary Initiative is doing,” Traphagan said. “I don’t know of any other place that is trying to do such work. I think it’s extraordinary that ASU realizes the 19th-century model of higher education doesn’t work very well any more. I’m happy to see someone doing something different, and I’m excited to be a part of it, and to be able to contribute to the future of space exploration in such a vibrant setting.”

Story written by Steve Des Georges.

As a scholar of Japan, Traphagan will explore how the JAXA's programs and narratives around space exploration are shaped by Japanese religious ideas. His findings will be included in an edited volume, tentatively titled "Religion and Space Exploration in Cross-Cultural Perspective," and shared as part of a cross-cultural symposium to be hosted in spring 2024.

Photo courtesy John Traphagan

The symposium will discuss how religion, ideology and space exploration intersect in different societies and shape the ways those societies approach space exploration.

Photo courtesy John Traphagan

ASU student receives NSF Graduate Research Fellowship for DNA origami research

June 1, 2023

Imagine creating and folding tiny, intricate shapes and structures, made from DNA, that can deliver drugs to specific targets in the body, potentially reprogramming the body to fight off diseases, including cancer.

Cancer is a leading cause of illness and death in the developed world. In 2019, over 1.7 million individuals in the U.S. alone were diagnosed with cancer; 600,000 cases proved fatal. Although new gene therapies, such as oncolytic viruses and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy have proven effective in late-stage cancers, their high costs pose an unreasonable burden upon patients. NSF Graduate Research Fellowship recipient Bryan Ugaz. Photo by Mary Zhu/School of Molecular Sciences Download Full Image

To make treatments more widely available and affordable, doctoral student Bryan Ugaz, from Arizona State University's School of Molecular Sciences, has been awarded a highly competitive National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship grant to pursue research using DNA origami as a gene delivery system to create anti-cancer T-cells and CAR-T cells in situ.

WATCH: Ugaz talks about his research

This involves using a DNA origami nano-cage as a "synthetic virus" to deliver genes to T-cells. If successful, this approach would enable logic-gated, "locked" nanostructures, which only will release the genetic cargo if specified RNA "keys" that specify the cell type are present. This work would have powerful implications in immunotherapy and genetic engineering of T-cells to kill cancer.

In DNA origami, a viral genome (scaffold strand) is folded into a user-defined 2D/3D object by a series of short 20–60 base-pair staple strands, which selectively bind to regions of the genome, generating the desired nanostructure. Compared with their viral or lipid-based counterparts, DNA origami nanostructures are dynamic and site-addressable.

CAR-T cell and oncolytic viral therapies have been approved by federal agencies. If successful, this project will lay important foundations for increasing the accessibility of both therapies by leveraging potentially cheaper materials (oligonucleotides) and making the therapy available for general use rather than being patient specific, which is a drawback of current therapies.

Ugaz is conducting this research with two advisors, School of Molecular Sciences professors Jeremy Mills and Nicholas Stephanopoulos.

Bryan Ugaz (center) with advisors Nicholas Stephanopoulos (left) and Jeremy Mills. Photo by Mary Zhu/School of Molecular Sciences

“Bryan's work focuses on using programmable DNA nanostructures to template complex and highly asymmetric protein-based nanostructures," Stephanopoulos said. "One of the big limitations of protein design for nanotechnology is that it is still hard to make shapes with the complexity of DNA origami, due to the lack of unique protein-protein interfaces needed. Bryan's work, in effect, 'piggybacks' off the addressability of DNA nanostructures to attach proteins in defined locations and crosslink them into novel and addressable shapes.”

Mills added, “Among the unique approaches Bryan has chosen to address these difficult goals is the inclusion of non-canonical amino acids (amino acids that do not exist in nature, ncAAs) into these proteins. The use of functional ncAAs in protein engineering is highly innovative and will enable novel functions in these protein materials not possible in nature.”

Mills and Stephanopoulos agreed about Ugaz's bright future.

“Bryan is a hardworking and highly innovative graduate student, and they are always coming up with new ideas and experiments to try,” Mills said.

Stephanopoulos said, “The NSF GRFP is a great recognition of their potential, and both of their advisors look forward to many exciting projects in the years to come.”

James Klemaszewski

Science writer, School of Molecular Sciences

480-965-2729 Klem@asu.edu

Solutions

ASU partners with community colleges to smooth path for transfer students

May 30, 2023

With 150 partnerships, students can avoid wasting time, money on unneeded credits

In a major push to widen access to bachelor’s degrees for transfer students, Arizona State University has formed partnerships with 150 community colleges around the country over the past three years.

These alliances create a seamless transfer experience to more than 400 degree programs at ASU for students who begin their journey at community colleges to save money and stay near home.

Transfer from two-year colleges to university has been a major sticking point in higher education for decades. Many students find that they cannot transfer community college credits to their desired degree programs at universities, resulting in wasted time and money.

While about 80% of community college students want to earn a bachelor's degree, only 32% who started in fall 2015 actually transferred to a four-year institution within six years, according to the Community College Research Center at Columbia University. The reasons are complicated, with lack of money often hindering housing and transportation. But difficulty in transferring credits is one major barrier.

That’s a big deal because of the number of students who come to ASU after starting their higher education somewhere else: 42% of all newly enrolled students at ASU in fall 2021, both on campus and online, had taken classes at another institution.

So ASU has worked to eliminate transfer obstacles through two big initiatives – the MyPath2ASU course-mapping tool, plus supportive partnerships with community colleges around the country through the Academic Alliances unit at ASU. The university hit the 150-partnership milestone this month.

About 30,000 students around the country are now actively using MyPath2ASU, a personalized course-by-course transfer map. The digital tool minimizes the loss of credits by helping students select the right courses for their intended major at ASU, for either in-person degree programs or through ASU Online. More than 400 degree programs are offered.

ASU’s research has shown that students who use MyPath2ASU are more likely to transfer and have better outcomes than students who don’t use it.

The personalized, self-service MyPath2ASU is available to any community college student, regardless of whether their college has a partnership with ASU. But a partnership provides much more support for both students and the community college.

Another reason the transfer process works smoothly is because ASU has fully evaluated more than 1 million courses from other institutions to receive equivalency at ASU, thanks to the Academic Transfer Credit Solutions team, which works closely with ASU faculty to continuously add courses.

It’s not uncommon for community colleges to have articulation agreements with universities for individual programs such as psychology or business, according to Amber Covington, senior director of collaboration and partnership integration for academic alliances in the Office of the University Provost.

“What has been different about our approach is that we’re partnering institution to institution, not program to program,” she said.

“We’re looking to serve all students,” she said. “Because of the way we do course equivalencies, we’re able to offer pathways at a larger scale.”

Encouraging associate degrees

The Academic Alliance team is always reaching out to community colleges around the country, explaining the benefits of partnerships to the institution and its students. The 150 partners include all of the two-year colleges in Arizona, including tribal colleges, and dozens in California.

“We show the colleges how we want to be engaged with them and that we’re encouraging their students to stay and earn their associate degree. We’re not poaching their students,” Covington said.

“We’re working together for their students’ success and best outcome and that’s what’s most salient to the colleges we speak to and why they buy into the partnership and why we were able to get to this level.”

Annique Petit, senior director for community college engagement and training at ASU, said that students who sign up for MyPath2ASU while studying at community colleges are much more likely to enroll at ASU after completing their community college goals.

“This directly improves upward mobility opportunities for transfer students, and that’s where our focus lies,” she said.

“We’re especially fortunate to have a partner like the Maricopa County Community College District. MCCCD was in lockstep with ASU at the beginning of the evolution of our transfer tools and has been instrumental in assisting ASU to help students obtain applicable credits while at MCCCD that apply to their eventual majors at ASU.

“This, in turn, helped ASU to evolve and grow MyPath2ASU in order to assist students at the rest of the Arizona community colleges, and now nationally,” she said.

It’s important for community college students to start using MyPath2ASU as early in their educational journey as possible so they don’t take unneeded courses. So once a college signs a partnership agreement, ASU helps it to get the word out, according to Renee Beauchamp, senior director of transfer operations for academic alliances.

“We actively create a co-marketing toolkit and media campaign to promote the use of MyPath2ASU, which is unlike anything else partner institutions are doing at community colleges,” she said. The campaign includes news releases, blog posts, social media assets and integration into both institutions’ websites, as well as twice-yearly training for staff.

“A lot of times during the onboarding phase, the community colleges are impressed with how we work with them. They’ve never experienced that before,” she said.

The onboarding process involves training sessions with community college advisors to introduce them to ASU and the resources and support provided to the advisors and their students. Advisors are introduced to topics such as the benefits of MyPath2ASU, campus information, choices of learning modalities, the myriad of transfer-specific tools available to help students choose degree options, how to apply for transfer-specific scholarship opportunities, and how to connect with transfer student ambassadors before enrolling.

Later, ASU will refresh the partnership strategy, creating video testimonials with successful students and tailored messaging around in-demand majors.

“We have a design process so that it’s a full-circle experience for our partners,” Covington said.

“We don’t want any of our early partners to feel like we have lofty goals and then we forgot about them. We work hard at maintaining our partnerships and determining the best touch points to make sure they work.”

One of ASU’s partners is Long Beach City College in California. Mike Muñoz, the Long Beach Community College District superintendent-president, said the alliance provides the college’s students with an avenue to pursue higher education at a university that offers tailored resources for transfer students.

“This also expands the possibilities for our students to transfer to a top-tier university like ASU, renowned for their cutting-edge research, innovation, collaborations with NASA and distinguished faculty,” he said.

Easing the burden

Program managers Patrick Emmons and Glorian Konieczny are on the team that reaches out to community colleges to see if they’re interested in partnering. Very few decline.

“It’s a completely free service that benefits their students and provides them with the most seamless and clear transfer experience,” Emmons said.

“But they often wonder how they can take this on because they don’t want to add responsibilities to an already busy staff. We try to take as much of the work off the community college as possible so it’s a simple connection for them.”

Once an agreement is signed, the colleges give ASU access to the course catalogs for the top five programs they initially want to prioritize for articulation — typically majors that are popular or that they want to highlight. ASU then articulates all the courses in those five programs, matching each with the equivalent course at ASU so the credits will transfer toward a degree.

Among the most popular majors for transfers are nursing, business administration, criminology and criminal justice, psychology and engineering.

After the top five programs, the college’s entire catalog is articulated, Konieczny said.

ASU and the partner colleges also agree to share data on student enrollment success.

“We both really appreciate the fact that we get to be a part of a movement in higher education that has the potential to lay a foundational change to how transfer is done,” Emmons said. “We’re demystifying the process.”

Top photo of ASU sign on Tempe campus by Deanna Dent/ASU

Mary Beth Faller

Reporter , ASU News

480-727-4503 marybeth.faller@asu.edu

Solutions

Designing for an energy transition

May 30, 2023

ASU professor talks about the future of transitioning from fossil fuels

The United Nations World Meteorological Organization has recently reported that global temperatures are almost certain to be the warmest on record during the next five years.

Additionally, one of those years is likely to exceed the threshold — 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial averages — identified by the Paris Agreement to limit greenhouse-gas emissions and mitigate worsening droughts, wildfires, storms and flooding.

The news reinforces the urgency of efforts to transition electric power generation, transportation, manufacturing and other systems from their reliance on fossil fuels to renewable sources, including solar and wind. Much of this work focuses on the development and deployment of carbon-neutral energy technology, but achieving the necessary changes also involves debates and decisions about the routes we take to adopting clean energy at individual, organizational and societal levels.

Clark Miller

ASU News discussed these broader issues with Clark Miller, director of the Center for Energy and Society within ASU's School for the Future of Innovation in Society. The center collaborates with community, industry and government stakeholders to help Arizona and the nation chart and navigate pathways to a successful clean energy future.

Question: Your school references the idea of different energy futures. Could you explain what that means? Isn’t the goal simply to eliminate fossil fuels and stop the planet from overheating?

Answer: Transitioning to renewables and not burning carbon is the goal, and it’s important for everyone. But it’s estimated that we are going to spend $100 trillion dollars to achieve a global clean energy economy. So, we should spend it well because how we design our future energy system will have major consequences separate from climate. What criteria should we be applying to this transition? Right now, our sole criterion is net zero carbon. I’d like to add other criteria that assess how well future energy technologies serve human purposes. While we're optimizing for emissions, can we also optimize for social outcomes?

Let me give you an example. Many people here in metro Phoenix and across the country are putting solar panels on their rooftops. Doing so means they are supporting clean energy and saving a lot of money on electricity. But not everyone can afford to buy solar panels and enjoy those savings. So, what do we do about that? There's an obvious unfairness if we simply leave that disparity to market forces. How do we correct for market failures, and whose responsibility is it to do so? These are questions we need to ask as we design and deploy clean energy technologies.

Q: What are some of those different models when it comes to the example of residential solar panel systems?

A: They relate to the allocation of ownership. For example, there’s a model in which people own their rooftop systems. They use the electricity they generate and trade it with the grid and maybe with each other. This model represents a widely distributed solar energy future in which people can engage in the market as producers and consumers.

In another model, the solar panels are owned by big businesses that rent rooftop space from the homeowners. It’s a leasing model that is very common in Arizona. It’s a way for lower-income households to enter the solar game. But the rent is usually paid as an electricity bill credit, and the savings for the homeowner are a lot less. Most of the financial benefits of this arrangement flow to the solar company. They are far more centralized.

Finally, there is the idea of a community solar cooperative, which is popular in Europe and a few places in the U.S. A neighborhood association gets together and buys everyone’s solar panels collectively and cheaply. Each resident then benefits from a share of ownership as well as the electricity generated and any revenue from power sold back to the grid. Even renters benefit, as well as people who can’t afford to buy a full solar system.

Note that these solar panels and systems are physically the same in every model. But they represent different financial arrangements and quite different energy futures — and human futures — if we scale any one of them versus another. It’s an example of how the design of our new electrical power systems can have significant implications for society. We explore those implications in our recent books, "The Weight of Light" and "Cities of Light."

Q: Awareness of those implications extends beyond the deployment of residential solar. What are some points to consider around the expansion of renewables at the commercial level?

A: Well, we're already seeing the early stages of concern in rural areas about large-scale solar and wind deployment. Ranchers in Arizona who have been using Bureau of Land Management parcels to graze cattle for decades are suddenly not able to renew their leases because new energy projects are taking over those sites. The same is happening to farmers in the Southeast. It’s a form of competition that is starting to drive up land rental prices and displace ranching and farming family businesses. Plus, we are very early in developing large solar projects across the country, and the pace of development is increasing quickly. So, these disruptive issues are likely to become more acute.

Q: Are there measures we can take to ease those pressures and keep expanding renewables? For example, can we employ underused urban land?

A: Yes, but the farmland model is very popular among solar energy developers. Farms are low-cost places to build projects. The land has already been disturbed and leveled. It can be purchased or rented from private landowners. All of which helps these energy projects to competitively price the electricity they sell. With that said, there are a lot of urban spaces that can be used for solar projects. At ASU, we have a number of solar shade canopies that make space more livable in the summer heat. You could do the same in parks. Plus, parking lots make up a significant portion of American cities, so they could be tapped for this purpose. Developers would need to build the solar panels higher off the ground and initially dig up the lots to put in electrical conduit lines. So, it would certainly be more expensive at first, compared to open farmland. However, the shade is an added benefit, and you can add even more social value if you make them beautiful.

Perhaps most importantly, the urban approach may also move us closer to a more equitable future. Cities are the world’s energy hogs, and it would be good if they produced more of their own energy instead of continuing to impose new infrastructure on rural communities. And urban solar tends to be smaller and owned in a more distributed fashion, which lets more people enjoy financial benefits.

Q: Electricity is so fundamental to the fabric of our lives that we don’t often think about it. We take it for granted. Will a transition from fossil fuels to renewables bring about some unexpected changes to how we live?

A: Almost certainly. Consider the fact that our world has been driven by electricity from large coal-fired power plants for a very long time. Coal still produces more electricity than any other single source of energy, despite all the closures of coal plants and coal mines. Why? Part of the reason is that coal plants deliver the same amount of power all the time — day and night, summer and winter.

But people have never consumed electricity as a constant function. We collectively consume more electricity during the day, and less of it at night when society shuts down. Of course, those coal plants keep generating power at night, and that means there is a surplus of output. This is why electricity is more expensive during the day and cheaper at night.

Converting to solar flips that situation on its head. The surplus will happen during the day, making daytime electricity cheaper than nighttime electricity, since the latter will need to be stored in costly batteries before delivery. It’s already happening in California, where daytime electricity prices are now sometimes even negative, meaning they pay you to use solar energy.

So, what does that mean? We don’t know. But what we do know is that many aspects of today’s society are enabled by cheaper electricity at night. Think about the ubiquity of night life in the form of shopping, restaurants, concert venues and more. In fact, some of the original investors in amusement parks were electricity utilities seeking to create demand for their power surpluses at night and on weekends. If a shift to cheap daytime electricity and expensive nighttime electricity are similarly drivers of behavior, the changes to culture will be significant.

Currently cheap nighttime power also contributed to industry becoming so capital intensive. If your manufacturing equipment operates around the clock, you produce more and you do it more quickly. This is why we have three-shift factories and warehouses. But what does it mean if the most expensive electricity is now in the middle of the night? Does that change — combined with the fact that few workers really like the graveyard shift — sufficiently outweigh the capital investment benefits?

These are scenarios we need to consider as we plan the future of our power grid.

Top photo: The Red Rock Solar Plant, located between Tucson and Casa Grande in Arizona. Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU Now

Gary Werner

Senior Media Relations Officer , Media Relations and Strategic Communications

480-727-5622 gary.werner@asu.edu

Tech showcase spotlights 5 digital projects at ASU

May 26, 2023

For one of the largest universities in the nation, technology plays a critical role in the advancement of student and learner success.

Recently, over 500 team members from Arizona State University’s IT community united at Empower, celebrating the collective impact of technology-driven innovation happening within the university. From immersive learning environments to intelligent chatbots, ASU stands at the forefront of educational advancements. Person wearing a virtual headset. Students immerse themselves in virtual reality at Arizona State University's Tempe campus. Photo courtesy Mike Sanchez/ASU Enterprise Technology Download Full Image

Five teams from across the university took the stage at Empower for the 5x5 Technology Showcase to share how their projects are enhancing the digital ecosystem at ASU and beyond. Below is a glimpse at those presentations.

1. Unlocking learning in virtual reality at Dreamscape Learn

Presented by Hasrah Thomas

ASU’s Dreamscape Learn offers fully immersive learning environments, providing students with engaging, interactive educational experiences. Seamlessly blending cutting-edge virtual reality technology and innovative pedagogy, Dreamscape Learn enhances and complements traditional learning methods, propelling students into the future of education.

At Empower, Hasrah Thomas, director of Realm 4 initiatives at Dreamscape Learn and EdPlus at ASU, delved into recent research on the success rate of nearly 700 students participating in the Dreamscape Learn biology course.

“We found that the students participating in Dreamscape Learn labs not only enjoyed the experience but also significantly outperformed their peers in the non-DSL labs, leading to greater student success and confirming the effectiveness of this innovative approach,” Thomas said.

In recent studies, students’ lab grades were 9% higher than those in the conventional courses. The median lab grade for students in Dreamscape Learn was 96%, compared with 87% for the other group. Additional findings highlighted the positive impact of the full-immersive course on collaboration and engagement, with students expressing overall enjoyment and giving it a high rating of 4.4 out of 5.

2. Exploring credit mobility to advance student and learner agency

Presented by Bobby Gray and Kate Giovacchini

Research shows that there are 39 million learners in the U.S. who have some college but no degree. Bobby Gray, executive director of products and programs at Enterprise Technology, and Kate Giovacchini, director of the Trusted Learner Network at Enterprise Technology, took to the stage to share a suite of tools being developed by ASU’s Enterprise Technology to improve credit mobility.

First, the Trusted Learner Network (TLN) is designed as a central credential repository. Institutions and organizations that are part of the TLN can securely store evidence of an individual's credentials inside the network. Students can then access their full evidence of achievements from across their lifetimes in one, easy-to-access portal.

Tools like the Interactive Degree Planner (IDP) and ASU Pocket — which can operate within the TLN and as stand-alone products — allow students to apply their credentials to better navigate the lifelong learner journey.

ASU Pocket is a digital wallet for students to carry evidence of their earned credentials. The digital wallet uses a self-sovereign identity model that gives individuals full ownership and control of their digital identities and associated credentials — such as degrees, digital badges or certificates. Individuals can directly share verified credentials with institutions and organizations using their digital wallet.

Interactive Degree Planner is the most recent development. The service, which is still in the design phase, will provide prospective and current students with a portal to map out their academic journey. The planner helps students explore up to five academic plans, track progress toward their degree, plan their courses each semester and ensure they meet the requirements for graduation.

“These critical mobility initiatives are designed to reduce friction for all of our learners and students, recognizing that they come to us from completely different pathways, backgrounds and experiences,” Giovacchini said.