ASU scientists selected for NASA observatory Science Investigation Team

December 23, 2015

NASA has announced the selection of Science Investigation Teams for its Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST). ASU will be the lead institution for one of these teams, which includes School of Earth and Space Exploration scientists James Rhoads, Sangeeta Malhotra, Rogier Windhorst, Rolf Jansen, and Vithal Tilvi, along with scientists from the University of Texas, Texas A&M, University of Arizona, Stockholm University and Uppsala University in Sweden.

WFIRST will be a NASA observatory designed to settle essential questions in the areas of dark energy, exoplanets, and infrared astrophysics. The telescope has a primary mirror 2.4 meters in diameter (7.9 feet), the same size as the Hubble Space Telescope's primary mirror. WFIRST will have two instruments, the Wide Field Instrument, and the Coronagraph Instrument. Artistic view of NASA’s Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) space observatory. Photo by NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Download Full Image

The Wide Field Instrument will have a field of view 100 times greater than the Hubble wide field instrument, capturing more of the sky with less observing time. As the primary instrument, the Wide Field Instrument will measure light from 380 million galaxies over the course of the mission lifetime. WFIRST is expected to discover about 2,600 exoplanets over the course of the mission.

The ASU team will develop a detailed plan for how to use WFIRST to study cosmic dawn, the period when the first stars formed in the earliest galaxies, and when the light produced by those earliest objects flooded the universe and ionized most of the ordinary matter. 

“We made the case to NASA that WFIRST can and should explore this exciting time in cosmic history, in tandem with its primary science goals of studying dark energy and finding extrasolar planets,” says Rhoads.  “And we put together a team with the scientific and technical expertise to help plan for that.” 

Adds Malhotra, “A six-month survey with WFIRST will be equivalent to about a hundred years of Hubble Space Telescope infrared observations. We will show how this can be used to chronicle both the early history of galaxy and quasar formation, and the effect those objects had on the universe around them.” 

With this announcement, ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration, an academic unit of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, is now playing a significant role in three of NASA’s flagship observatories: The Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, and now the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope.

WFIRST is designed for a six-year mission, and will launch on an Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) out of Cape Canaveral in 2024.

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Karin Valentine

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ASU's Arntzen named to National Academy of Inventors

ASU's Arntzen named to National Academy of Inventors.
December 23, 2015

Arizona State University Regents’ Professor and research scientist Charles Arntzen, Ph.D., has been named a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI).

Arntzen is a pioneer in plant biotechnology and the development of plant-based vaccines and therapeutics for human and animal disease prevention. Referred to as “the godfather of pharming,” Arntzen is best known for playing a key role in developing ZMapp, the first successful treatment against the Ebola virus during the largest outbreak in history. The 2014 Ebola epidemic has resulted in more 28,000 cases and 11,000 deaths.

NAI’s highly prestigious honor is presented to inventors who have demonstrated a prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development and the welfare of society.

“With this award, Charlie Arntzen has validated our Biodesign Institute mission of improving global health through translational research,” says Sethuraman “Panch” Panchanathan, senior vice president for Knowledge Enterprise Development at ASU. “This prominent honor fittingly acknowledges the impact that his developments will have on current and future generations.”

“It has been incredibly rewarding to see how an idea, considered unconventional at the time we first worked it out in our ASU laboratory, could emerge to be the leading therapeutic for the treatment of Ebola,” Arntzen said. “I was lucky to be in an academic environment that tolerated high-risk, high-reward research, and to be able to work with a skilled multi-disciplinary team.”

During the course of a prolific career, Arntzen and his collaborators have used plants as bioactive factories for the production of life-saving vaccines and therapeutics. These have included plant-based anti-cancer agents, therapeutic agents to protect populations from bioterror threats, proteins to combat rabies, plant-derived vaccines against hepatitis C, vaccines to inoculate recipients against noroviruses and many others.

Arntzen's long-standing research interests are in plant molecular biology and protein engineering, producing pharmacologically active products in transgenic plants, overcoming health and agricultural constraints in the developing world as well as the use of plant biotechnology for enhancement of food quality and value.

NAI has named 168 leaders of invention and innovation to Fellow status. Those named today, including Arntzen, bring the total number of NAI Fellows to 582, representing more than 190 research universities and governmental and nonprofit research institutes.

Other ASU researchers to receive the award include Stuart Lindsay, Ph.D., director of the Center for Single Molecule Biophysics at the Biodesign Institute, and Michael Kozicki, director of the ASU Center for Applied Nanoionics.

Arntzen, a researcher in the Biodesign Institute’s Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology at ASU, is also professor in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences' School of Life Sciences. He was appointed to the Florence Ely Nelson Presidential Endowed Chair at ASU in Tempe in 2000 and named Regents' Professor in 2004. He served as the founding director of the Biodesign Institute until May 2003 and as co-director of the Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology of that institute until 2007. Arntzen was also named the top creative person in business in 2014 by Fast Company magazine.

In their selection for the fellowship, the NAI honors not only Arntzen’s restlessly innovative spirit but also his dedication to the improvement of human society, through research aimed at reducing suffering and mortality caused by infectious disease.

The NAI Fellows will be inducted on April 15 as part of the fifth annual Conference of the National Academy of Inventors at the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

University News School of Life Sciences Biodesign Institute The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Biodesign Center for Immunotherapy, Vaccines and Virotherapy

ASU helps launch engineering accreditation program in Indonesia

December 23, 2015

Arizona State University, the U.S. Agency for International Development/Indonesia Higher Education Leadership and Management project (USAID-HELM) and Andalas University in Padang, Indonesia, launched a collaborative effort in June under a special initiative called the Leadership Education for Engineering Accreditation Program (LEEAP).

The LEEAP initiative will serve as a catalyst to enhance the quality and competitiveness of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) programs at higher education institutions in Indonesia that meet regional and international standards. LEEAP leadership met to discuss how to develop impact projects that create solutions for Indonesia. Left to right: Abdul Rahman (HELM QA specialist), Hairul Abral (dean, Andalas University), John Rome (Deputy CIO, ASU), Jeff Goss (associate vice provost, ASU), Scott Danielson (faculty, ASU), Werry Darta Taifur (rector, Andalas University), Kathy Wigal (associate director, ASU), Tafdil Husni (new rector inauguration on Nov 2015, Andalas University) and Zainul Daulay (dean, Andalas University). Photo provided by HELM/USAID. Download Full Image

LEEAP is a result of the success of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering’s involvement in Vietnam with the Vocational and University Leadership and Innovation Institute (VULII) and the Higher Engineering Education Alliance Program (HEEAP).

VULII is designed to contribute directly to Vietnam’s national goal of increasing the quality of higher education while strengthening human and institutional capacity to contribute to Vietnam’s economic growth. HEEAP is designed to modernize traditional Vietnamese theory-based engineering programs by introducing applied and hands-on instructional approaches.

Jeff Goss, associate vice provost and the director of HEEAP, led the ASU delegation and emphasized LEEAP’s significance as an opportunity for industry and academic partners to develop impact projects with the U.S. government to solve some problems or create solutions.

“Accreditation will help to employ students in smart positions and retain the companies’ engineers and technicians to drive growth in the science and technology sector and increase opportunities for technology development and innovation,” Goss said.

The ASU team is assisting Andalas University in reaching global recognition and international accreditation. Andalas will then use it as the primary mechanism to attain international standing as a university.

Scott Danielson, director of the VULII and an associate professor in the Fulton Schools, explained that achieving international recognition requires understanding of what students know and working to improve what they know.

“Andalas University did very well in Indonesian accreditation and now we have to go beyond that,” he said. “Now the university must think beyond the borders of Indonesia and earn the school and its programs recognition in other countries.”

Danielson said there are two routes of international recognition, each with their own scope and uniqueness: Asian University Network-Quality Assurance (AUN-QA), and Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET).

“What we will teach the university’s leaders is what works to gain accreditation from both ABET and AUN-QA. There is more to do for either ABET or for AUN accreditation than what we will cover, because this is a large effort,” he said.

The most challenging part of the endeavor will be changing traditional attitudes and approaches to education, Danielson said. It will take leadership by the dean and rector of Andalas University to drive that change.

The focus will be on improving the quality of academic study programs, which would be of primary importance in earning accreditation from AUN and ABET. The goal is to help the university understand what its students know and what they are capable of doing, and then taking steps to improve their knowledge and abilities.

“This is a special initiative of HELM so we have limited time,” Danielson said. “We are only working on a piece of this — the piece that is centered on continuous program improvement.”

The hope is that leaders and academic staff will be able to document in a data-driven way what students know and have learned and use that information to make good decisions about improving the program.

“That’s what we’re going to focus on. It is only a piece of achieving international accreditation, but I believe it is both the hardest part and also the most important part of the process,” Danielson said.

“The Andalas University LEEAP faculty are fortunate to have the active support of their rector and dean in their efforts,” said Kathy Wigal, associate director for curricular innovation in the Fulton Schools’ Office of Global Outreach and Extended Education.

She said workshops conducted in September, plus follow-up coaching and mentoring has sparked progress in several areas — including development of the academic program objectives and program outcomes, initial strategy and planning for assessment and evaluation necessary for continuous improvement, as well as the individual faculty course development efforts.

“We are continuing our coaching and training efforts by emphasizing innovative curriculum and teaching pedagogy including active learning techniques and problem-based and project-based methods,” Wigal said. “I am looking forward to seeing the next iteration of their efforts in January.”

The ASU LEEAP team acknowledges the complex nature of the international accreditation processes, and emphasizes the importance of collaborative work between all parties, including university leaders, program leaders, key faculty members and students.

Various workshops are planned for the coming year. In addition, results of work done under the initiative will be shared at a Partnership Network Seminar at the conclusion of the project.

Written by:
Erik Wirtanen, erik.wirtanen@asu.edu
480-727-1957
Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering

University News Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering Engineering Faculty Staff

ASU’s TweetTracker helps make sense of social media

December 22, 2015

There are 500 million tweets per day, and Arizona State University’s TweetTracker tool helps people to track, analyze and understand that activity by identifying the who, what, where and when of social-media usage.

TweetTracker is a Web-based system that collects and visualizes social-media data. It allows users to track events as they happen, collecting data from such sites as Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and VKontakte (the largest European social network). It also provides visualization capabilities such as graphs and maps to allow the user to understand properties of the events they track, such as which geographic regions are talking about each topic, and who the top users are in the context of the event. TweetTracker is built in ASU's Data Mining and Machine Learning Lab led by professor Huan Liu (top row, middle). Photo by Jessica Hochreiter/ASU Download Full Image

“The goals of the system are to continue to support our users in both the domains of social science and crisis response,” says Fred Morstatter, a computer science graduate student in the Data Mining and Machine Learning Lab at ASU. “We do this by continually expanding the feature set of the tools.”

TweetTracker was started through a grant from the Office of Naval Research and was built at the Data Mining and Machine Learning Lab led by director Huan Liu, a computer science professor in the School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering, one of the six Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at ASU. The TweetTracker team was given the ASU President's Award for Innovation in 2014.

Tracking social media can help first responders understand what is unfolding on the ground during crises. The aggregate of social-media posts can give indications of what resources are needed. This can help increase the number of people who are given relief during crises.

“In 2012, we were training a group of analysts in the military to use TweetTracker,” Morstatter says. “During the training, a terrorist attack was carried out on the U.S. Embassy in Libya. We were able to help the analysts collect social-media data pertaining to the incident and understand what was going on in the region.

“When Hurricane Sandy hit in October 2012, we used the tool to collect data pertaining to evacuation efforts in New York and New Jersey. During the course of the storm we collected over 5 million tweets that were used to understand the effect of the storm. This data was used by agencies such as FEMA to analyze how users seek relief in times of disaster.”

Researchers also can use the tool to analyze the data and answer social-media questions. Universities across the globe have used TweetTracker to answer questions such as information diffusion and bias detection.

Data from TweetTracker has been used to find users tweeting from within crisis regions. One difficulty first responders have when viewing Twitter data is that very little (~1 percent) contains geographic information. By leveraging the data from TweetTracker, researchers proposed methods to find the geographic coordinates of the tweet by only looking at its text. This increases the number of tweets that first responders can look at when trying to understand what is going on in a crisis region.

Written by:
Erik Wirtanen, erik.wirtanen@asu.edu
480-727-1957
Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering

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What does it mean to be an American?

Smithsonian's Kurin: Museums are a neutral space for exploring other cultures.
ASU's partnership with the Smithsonian is long-standing and fruitful.
December 22, 2015

Smithsonian's Kurin says museums, public forums with institutions such as ASU can help us figure out who we are as a people

Museums can get a bad rap, seen simply as static storage for the past.

But Richard Kurin of the Smithsonian Institution said they also hold the key to our future.

“The Smithsonian used to have this moniker, this nickname, ‘the nation’s attic.’ Imagine any dusty museum with all sorts of dust-ridden things and boring exhibits and you get bored and you fall asleep,” said Kurin, the Smithsonian’s undersecretary of history, art and culture.

“It really never was that, but now we find that items in our collections are actually keys to understanding the planet.”

The Smithsonian’s specimens represent a biopsy of Earth, Kurin said, allowing us to compare what’s happening now with regard to — for example — climate change with what the planet was like 100 years ago, or 100 million years ago.

Kurin visited Phoenix this fall as part of the Sandra Day O’Connor Institute’s Distinguished Speaker Series, where he shared more than 100 images of curated items and a wealth of knowledge with a sold-out crowd.

“Our resources give us a kind of encyclopedia of the American experience in all its diversity,” he said in an interview with ASU Now. “And the idea is how to use that. Americans have a very active dialogues with each other; we’re trying to figure out who we are as a people, how we get along.”

Part of that mission is bringing those resources to people around the country — not just at the Smithsonian’s museums in Washington, D.C. — to encourage that discourse. One of the public programs the Smithsonian is involved with is Zócalo Public Square, an affiliate of Arizona State University.

Zócalo Public Square is an ideas exchange that blends live events and humanities journalism, providing a nonpartisan space to tackle fundamental issues.

“We’re investigating the whole idea of what is it to be American, and how do you look at that and answer that question. That is not a textbook answer,” Kurin said.

“That answer is written in the experience and the words and the hearts and the souls and spirits of people. This is an attempt, with ASU, to hold public forums, get that word out … so that people around this country can get a glimmer into someone else’s world.”

The ASU-Smithsonian collaboration is long-standing and includes:

The Sandra Day O’Connor Institute, whose mission is to create a nation where important policy decisions are made through a process of civil discussion, critical analysis and the informed participation of all citizens, shares a rich past with ASU, including such events at the 2012 visit by former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. In the fall of 2016, the O’Connor Institute will relocate to the new Arizona Center for the Law and Society building on the downtown Phoenix campus.

In a time of urban unrest, museums and educational spaces can offer a neutral, non-threatening zone for getting at the roots of issues, Kurin explained.

“The one thing about American democracy, you know, it’s wampus, it’s not clean, it’s always in the making, it’s always developing,” he said. “I look at that museum as a place where some of these issues — from Ferguson and Baltimore, New York, Staten Island — some of these cases that have come up, where a museum can provide that kind of neutral, civic space for civic discussion and understanding.”

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ASU-Leuphana joint master's degree program gains German accreditation

December 21, 2015

A joint master's degree program in sustainability science between Arizona State University and Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany, has been approved by Acquin, the German Accreditation Agency.

This marks a major milestone for the joint program, which is part of ASU’s global education efforts. The program, a first of its kind at ASU with a foreign university, is in global sustainability science. As part of their studies, students spend time at both universities, work on joint projects and receive a degree from both. Download Full Image

“Reaching sustainable development goals requires a different type of international education and new forms of institutional collaborations among universities and other institutions of higher learning,” said ASU President’s Professor Manfred Laubichler, who directs the joint ASU-Leuphana Center for Global Sustainability and Cultural Transformation. “Students need to learn to engage complex societal problems collaboratively and within a global setting that includes awareness of intercultural differences. This is exactly what this program attempts to do.”

ASU and Leuphana have a history of collaboration. In addition to the dual master's degree program and the Center for Global Sustainability and Cultural Transformation, they have worked on a “global classroom” project taught by professors from both institutions, and they continue to work together on an increasing number of joint research projects.

“Universities, as places for both education and research, have to learn how to work and collaborate in networks that actively utilize differences, as a focus on exclusivity and exclusion is preventing us from reaching the full potential of creative solutions needed to address the challenges of sustainable development,” Laubichler said. “In that sense the collaboration between ASU and Leuphana is breaking much-needed new ground.”

University News The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation School of Sustainability Education Sustainability Student

Director, Media Relations and Strategic Communications

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ASU Women and Gender Studies professor receives NIJ funding to further domestic-violence study

December 21, 2015

Associate professor Alesha Durfee of the ASU Women and Gender Studies program will be advancing her research on domestic violence and social policy with nearly $370,000 in funding awarded by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) through its Researcher-Practitioner Partnership program. Durfee’s project, “Investigating the Impacts of Institutional and Contextual Factors on Protection Order Decision-Making,” is a collaborative partnership with the Mesa Municipal Court and the National Center for State Courts.

The two-year project will focus on domestic-violence civil protection orders, which prohibit contact between an abuser and a victim. The project will identify and analyze formal and informal institutional practices (the “context” in which victims file) that may influence the decision of victims to file for protection orders and impact PO hearing outcomes controlling for individual level case and victim characteristics. The results of this research project may be used to help courts more efficiently and effectively process protection-order filings, increase victim satisfaction with the process, ensure equitable access to protection orders, and develop more effective victim outreach and service programs. alesha_durfee.jpg Download Full Image

“Approximately 36 percent of American women and 29 percent of American men will experience domestic violence at some point during their lifetime,” said Durfee.

“Protection orders are often a last resort for domestic-violence survivors living in fear, and thus my research over the last 10 years has focused on whether survivors are able to access orders when they need them. I’m excited to collaborate with the Mesa Municipal Court and the National Center for State Courts on this project as the integration of researcher and practitioner knowledge and perspectives leads to higher-quality research that is more easily translated into policy and practice.”

NIJ has provided funding for researcher-practitioner partnerships since 2009, allowing for further development of research in criminal justice matters that include parole and probation, police departments, specialized courts and victim-advocacy agencies. Only three researcher-practitioner proposals were funded in 2015.

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Bryan Beach

Communications specialist, School of Social Transformation

480-965-3003

Indigenous course modules in development through partnerships

December 21, 2015

In partnership with Indigenous-serving universities and Indigenous communities, the Justice and Social Inquiry Program (JSI) at the ASU School of Social Transformation is expanding its development of an Indigenous course modules concept.

Initial development began during the Pueblo Cohort Project, which called for the creation of innovative course content focused on Justice Studies and Indigenous peoples. Since then, an intensive and field-based course module design has grown through increased collaboration with tribal institutions and communities — based on JSI Indigenous faculty-driven work led by Dr. Elizabeth Sumida Huaman and Dr. Bryan Brayboy.   Pueblo Cohort image Download Full Image

“The School of Social Transformation has formed beautiful relationships with diverse Indigenous places and peoples around the world,” said Sumida Huaman. “We are very proud of these connections as we are able to learn from Indigenous communities and institutions, share what we know and are interested in, maintain dialogue and build lasting relationships with community members, students and scholars/researchers.”

Module sites include community-based field experience opportunities for JSI students, and each module is themed according to particular Indigenous issues. Moreover, all course assignments require students to link their current work and research interests with what they have learned, ensuring direct application of classroom and real-world knowledge towards shared solutions. 

Modules include: Indigenous healthy families and communities in partnership with McGill University and Kahnawake Mohawk Territory; Indigenous law and governance with the Sami Centre, University of the Arctic (UiT), Tromsø, Norway and Coastal Sami; Indigenous community-based research with the University of Waikato, New Zealand and Māori peoples; and Indigenous research and sovereignty with the Universities of Hawai’i, Manoa and Hilo, and Kamehameha Schools. 

Upcoming modules include Indigenous education with Salish Kootenai College in Montana, and Indigenous lands and globalization with Quechua institutions and communities in Huancayo and Cusco, Peru.  

University News Hawaii School of Social Transformation Center for Indian Education
Bryan Beach

Communications specialist, School of Social Transformation

480-965-3003

Unlocking the mystery of the human brain

ASU professor developing geometry-based computation algorithms to understand brain structures

December 21, 2015

According to the Alzheimer's Association, the number of people ages 65 and older with Alzheimer's disease may nearly triple, from 5.1 million to a projected 13.8 million by 2050, barring the development of medical breakthroughs to prevent or cure the disease.

Working with world-class neurologists, physicians and psychologists, Yalin Wang, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at Arizona State University, is developing modern geometry-based software to analyze brain imaging to find the specific brain morphometry change patterns which may discriminate between Alzheimer's disease development and normal aging. This work may help provide computational software to monitor and understand the structural changes related to Alzheimer's disease. Yalin Wang is developing modern geometry-based computation algorithms to understand human brain structures. Photographer: Nora Skrodenis/ASU. Download Full Image

“Our work is mainly with brain morphometry study,” Wang said. “As a noninvasive diagnostic method, imaging plays more and more important roles in neuroscience research. A good resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) image provides detailed information on brain development and neurodegenerative disease progress. Instead of checking each individual image frame, my work builds detailed 3-D brain surface and volumetric representation so that a global view and analysis of brain structure becomes possible.”

Wang's work is deeply rooted in mathematics. During his postdoc period, he worked with several first class mathematicians, including Shing-Tung Yau, a Fields Medal recipient, and Tony F. Chan, a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

“Aided by modern geometry research, my colleagues and I made solid progress to develop robust and efficient computation solutions on brain morphology study,” Wang said. “It, in turn, will expedite drug development to treat neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease, or help prevent some neural impairment. For example, our research on preterm babies could help predict neurodevelopmental outcomes, thus enabling the design of early intervention treatments — before years of pathological brain development and symptoms occur."

Wang’s research on the brain goes beyond Alzheimer’s. He is working to apply geometry computation to understand human low-level visual functions — in particular, on how a map in one's retina is mapped to the brain occipital cortex.

His work aims to discover the underlying biological structures by imaging and computation. This fundamental research will play an important role in some psychology research projects, such as visual or schizophrenia-related research.

Wang also aims to quantify brain white matter integrity by analyzing diffusion MRI images. The geometry-based software will provide a detailed and unprecedented map of the brain white matter structure, which could help prevent Alzheimer's disease as well as analyze the genetic effects on human brain structure.

His research is supported by six research grants from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health and Arizona Alzheimer’s consortium. He has published 45 journal papers, three book chapters and hundreds of conference papers and abstracts on his work.

“I want to make computers have more intelligence to help improve our quality of living,” Wang said. “The geometry research opens many new doors to solve brand new questions with computers. I think it is something that really motivates me to pursue such research every day.”

The methods developed by Wang and his colleagues can be applied to computer graphics, animation and geometric modeling. As an example, Wang is teaching two computer graphics classes in the School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering, one of the six Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering.

“Our methods can compute surface conformal parameterizations on general surfaces, which helps many geometric modeling problems,” Wang said. “For example, our work can help process geometric structures, 3-D printing and add textures to the products of the 3-D animation and computer gaming industries.”


Erik Wirtanen, erik.wirtanen@asu.edu
480-727-1957
Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering

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ASU named a 'Best College Value' for 2016

Washington, D.C.
December 18, 2015

Kiplinger’s ranking based on academic quality, freshmen retention and persistence rates, affordability

Arizona State University has been named to Kiplinger’s Personal Finance’s list of the top "best college values" of 2016.

According to the magazine, ASU is one of the top 100 best values in public higher education for in-state and out-of-state students, as measured by academic quality, freshmen retention and persistence rates, and affordability.
 
“We start with a universe of 1,200 schools, so each school on our rankings, from number 1 to number 300, is a best value,” said Janet Bodnar, editor of Kiplinger’s Personal Finance magazine.

Kiplinger’s rewards colleges who help students obtain degrees on time and within budget.

Through student retention programs such as eAdvisor, a unique system that guides and supports students in finding a major that fits his or her talents, and ASU’s unique Major Maps step-by-step roadmap tailored to each degree program to keep students on track, ASU has achieved increased retention and graduation rates.

ASU, the New American University, has opened its doors to all who are qualified while maintaining affordability and raising the quality of programs. ASU’s innovative faculty and high-caliber students from around the world have created an environment where inclusion prepares students for a globally connected world and the process of discovery is not bound by traditional academic disciplines.

This recognition is the most recent for ASU, which has also been lauded as the Most Innovative School by the U.S. News and World Report and the No. 4 public university chosen by international students, as reported by the Institute of International Education.

University News Washington, D.C. University Student Parent
Meenah Rincon

Public Relations Manager , ASU Online

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